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Thursday, Jan 3, 2013 1:56 PM UTC

Anonymous leaks video of Steubenville high schoolers joking about gang rape

The hackers leak damning video in operation against high schoolers accused of raping an unconscious 16-year-old VIDEO

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Topics: Video, Anonymous, Ohio, KnightSec, Rape, Hacking, big red, Steubenville,

Anonymous leaks video of Steubenville high schoolers joking about gang rape (Credit: Pedro Ruffo/Shutterstock)

As Salon noted last month, Anonymous launched an attack on Ohio’s Steubenville High School football players accused of gang raping a 16-year-old girl who was unconscious during a night of parties.

KnightSec, an arm of the hacker collective that specifically targets rapists, demanded a public apology be issued to the young woman and warned that it would release personal information of Big Red football players and staff who have defended the accused young men. No apology was issued by the hackers’ deadline of Jan. 1. That day, a video was leaked of a teenage boy — a former Steubenville High baseball team member — captured cruelly joking about the sexual assault.

“She is so raped,” he laughs, continuing an offensive tirade including the lines, “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson!” and “they raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team!” grossly quipping that the unconscious girl was “deader than Trayvon Martin,”  even as other voices captured in the video interject, saying, “That’s not cool, bro … That’s like rape. It is rape. They raped her.” Other teens in the video laugh along.

Police released a statement following the video’s release stating that they were already aware of the footage and had interviewed the young man who made the video, but did not comment further.

Jezebel noted that the boy featured tweeted “some people deserve to be peed on” the night of the rape last August. The New York Times reported — in an article that brought national attention to the incident –  that “Twitter posts, videos and photographs circulated by some who attended the nightlong set of parties suggested that an unconscious girl had been sexually assaulted over several hours while others watched. She even might have been urinated on.”

Two players on Steubenville’s locally beloved high school football team were arrested on rape charges and await a hearing in February. Anonymous launched its operation, #OpRedRoll, to target other individuals believed to have also carried out or helped cover up the assault, which includes adults in the Steubenville community who defended the football players and instead blamed the rape victim for trying to defame the team.

You can watch the leaked video, which contains highly offensive speech, here.

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com. More Natasha Lennard.

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