There’s no doubt in my mind that the four teenagers who are accused of gang-raping and sodomizing a Haitian immigrant in West Palm Beach, Florida for three hours straight last June and forcing her to perform oral sex with her 12-year-old son at gunpoint need help of the psychological kind.

What they don’t need, however, is help in being sprung from the Palm Beach County Jail. Yet that’s exactly what the Rev. Al Sharpton is demanding for those defendants, who range in age from 14 to 18.

Last week, the good reverend showed up in West Palm Beach to denounce the denial of bail to the defendants, saying that they are being treated differently from five white teenage defendants from Boca Raton, Florida who are accused of raping two middle school girls after a night of hard drinking on New Year's Eve, but who were granted bail.

Sharpton needs to choose his battles more wisely.

Before I go on, let me say that sexual assault is a serious crime, regardless of the circumstances under which the assault occurred. The Boca Raton youths who are accused of raping a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old girl after they had passed out from drinking vodka shots with them deserve to be held accountable for their crimes the same as the black youths who forcibly raped their victim in Dunbar Village, a housing project whose notoriety for criminal activity took on a macabre new resonance after that assault.

But there’s a colossal difference here, and it has nothing to do with race.

The difference is that the Boca Raton teenagers who are accused of rape were hanging out with their victims. They all knew each other, and, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, there may have been some confusion as to whether one of the girls had actually asked to have sex with one of them.

The youths who are accused in the Dunbar Village rape weren’t hanging out with their victim.

They brought guns to their party.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, which quoted court and police documents, the youths lured their victim, who had spent a day delivering phone books, to the door by telling her that the tires on her truck were flat. When she stepped outside, she was confronted by three, gun-wielding men, who ordered her back into her apartment and demanded money.

That’s when the terrorization took off.

When the victim told them she had no money, they ripped off her clothes and took turns raping and sodomizing her. They forced her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son. Then they made her get into a tub filled with vinegar and water, and, afterward, seemed to get their jollies pouring any stinging, corrosive household product they could find on her -– like hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, nail polish remover and ammonia.

And they would have set her on fire if they had been able to find a lighter.

Now, let’s be real here.

Bail is usually granted based on the defendants’ risk to the public or whether they pose a flight risk. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that the Boca Raton teenagers who got drunk and had non-consensual sex with drunk, underage girls who they were hanging out with pose less of a danger to the public than the West Palm Beach teenagers who armed themselves with guns, staked out a stranger and committed every act that their perverted imaginations compelled them to do.

That’s why they need to stay locked up.

In any case, I hate that Sharpton, for whatever reason, allowed himself to be drawn into hairsplitting over this kind of heinousness. Most of all, I hate the message that this sends to black women.

Black women are 12 percent of the U.S. population, yet we make up 13 percent of all rape victims. And scores of black women are silent about rape because of the kind of thing that Sharpton did. They believe they won’t be listened to; that no one will care.

Sharpton bills himself as a spokesman for the voiceless. Too bad this time, he decided to lend his voice to the ones who needed it the least -- and guarantee that more raped black women will continue to suffer in silence.