MELBOURNE - The acts of up to a dozen youths filmed sexually abusing and degrading a teenage girl were similar to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, a child psychologist says.
One school student has been expelled, another left his school voluntarily and others have been suspended over theshocking home-made DVD, which was filmed in Werribee in Melbourne's south-west and has been sold at at least three Victorian schools for A$5 ($5.75).
Excerpts of the DVD show a group of 12 youths surrounding the 17-year-old girl, who has a mild developmental delay, and bullying her to perform sex acts. The youths urinated on the girl and set her hair alight.
The DVD also depicts youths making chlorine bombs, harassing a homeless man and throwing eggs at taxi drivers.
Child psychologist Dr John Cheetham likened the mob behaviour to the degradation of Jews in World War II.
"It's the sort of behaviour you would expect in a prison camp. It's something like a flashback to the Second World War and the way the Jews were treated," Cheetham said.
Those involved in the attack were likely to be angry, resentful poor achievers who had not developed a set of values.
"Somewhere along the line they have not learned to have a social conscience and to respect the dignity of human beings," he said.
"The shock, the horror, the sense of degradation, would be just horrific and we know from the history of people that have had this sort of stuff imposed on them, is that we do get long-term trauma. We get sleeplessness, we get nightmares, we get an unwillingness to socialise, we get an unwillingness to go out of the house."
