Salon.com > Steubenville

High school students school us about rape culture

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:33:00 +0000

Thank you, Palo Alto High School. This is how it's done. We have had endless, frequently exasperating conversations of late about the harrowing culture of rape. We've dissected a climate in which college authorities are routinely, callously dismissive of students who claim sexual assault. We've watched as mainstream outlets like CNN and ABC News have expressed sympathy not for victims but convicted sex offenders. We've seen social commenters laughed off and criticized for merely suggesting we should talk to our boys about consent and sexual assault. And in the midst of it all, we've seen, again and again and again, girls being brutalized and bullied and blamed and ultimately sacrificed and boys left without direction or guidance.

Isn't it time we all heard what those impacted so fiercely and directly by rape and bullying have to say? Isn't it time we heard from high school students themselves?

Today in Steubenville victim blaming

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:12:00 +0000

It's been almost two weeks since the guilty verdict was handed down in the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case, but victim blaming just goes on and on.

Though Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were convicted on March 17 of raping their 16 year-old classmate, Steubenville's former NAACP leader Royal Mayo has offered his own very different version of events in a Thursday interview for the International Business Times. Speaking with writer Charles Poladian, Mayo ignores the verdict and refers to the girl as the "alleged victim," saying, "They’re alleging she got raped; she’s acknowledging that she wanted to leave with Trent."

Apparently in Mayo's mind, if you leave a party with a boy, you've signed off for whatever he may then do to you, even if you're unconscious.

My Steubenville

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Few people had ever heard of Steubenville, Ohio, until a shocking act of violence catapulted the small town onto the national stage. What most people don't know is that Steubenville is home to North America's largest evangelical teen gathering, and for three days each summer in high school, I joined them.

Back at home, youth group was a place to meet friends and participate in community service. There were beach parties and Christmas caroling. I met my first boyfriend.

Steubenville was Christianity ratcheted up, with the sort of weeping adoration one usually sees at concerts of preteen idols. At Steubenville, we were zealots. A team. We had our chants, our cheers, our rallying call. I can still summon the refrain of the evangelical anthem "Refiner's Fire," although I wouldn't be able to recall my high school's fight song even if someone handed me the lyrics. I've been imprinted. I consented to going without realizing what I was getting into, and once I knew, I went still. It was one of the few times each year I could step away from the confines of my conservative Catholic upbringing. I stepped deeper into that world, and the rules that governed it, without even noticing.

The week in 10 pics

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

From March Madness to Michele Bachmann's craziness, a look at the images that defined the week

Women aren’t even safe in the Twittersphere

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:44:00 +0000

The wheels of justice turn slowly – unless you're talking about the court of social media. There, the past few days have been an object lesson in instant payback – mostly aimed at females who've had the audacity to speak up.

The week started with the arrests of two Steubenville girls after the guilty verdicts in the rape case against two local teenage football players. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer explained, "The 16-year-old is charged with one misdemeanor count of aggravated menacing for threatening the life of the victim on Twitter. The 15-year-old is charged with one misdemeanor count of menacing for threatening bodily harm to the victim on Facebook." The threats against the victim were merely the latest ugly attacks in a case that was, from its beginning, about the devastating power of online community's hostility toward girls and women.

Steubenville rapists can be saved

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000

When the lawyer for Ma’lik Richmond, one of the two teens convicted in the Steubenville rape case, went on "The Piers Morgan Show" Tuesday night and said his client would appeal the verdict, he sounded, well, like a rape apologist. It was unfair for Richmond to be on a sex offender list, the lawyer, Walter Madison, had argued, because “I don't believe that a person at 75 years old should have to explain for something they did at 16 when scientific evidence would support your brain isn't fully developed.”

Incredulous, Morgan retorted, “I got three teenage sons and when you get to 16, 17 ... your brain's developed enough to know you shouldn't be raping girls."

But here's the thing: While Richmond and his fellow offender Trent Mays are justly being held accountable for their crimes, Madison was actually citing medical consensus.

“They have not completed their neurological development. That carries through until their early 20s,” says Elizabeth Letourneau, associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Health at Johns Hopkins and the director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. “They don't attend as much to the downside of what they're going to do as much as they attend to the pleasure or reward. Their brains are in fact different and cause them to behave differently.”

Steubenville vs. Delhi: A tale of two coverages

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:15:00 +0000

BUZZARDS BAY, Mass. — The bad news just keeps coming: the gang rape of a medical student in India resulting in her death; the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl in Pakistan; a Swiss tourist gang-raped, again in India.

The latest headline-grabbing case in the United States involves the prolonged and public assault on a 16-year-old girl by two high-school football stars in Steubenville, Ohio. The pair was found guilty. One was sentenced to a minimum of one year in a juvenile detention center; the other to two years.

The Ohio case has caused outrage on many levels; but it also raises important questions of media reporting on rape.

Does the publicity surrounding such an incident make it less likely that similar crimes will occur in the future? Or, conversely, does it re-victimize someone who has already undergone significant trauma, and further discourage the reporting of sex crimes?

And, last but not least, what does the Steubenville case say about sexual violence in the United States as opposed to the rest of the world?

Why are we supposed to have sympathy for rapists?

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:20:00 +0000

It's a case that's shown the world that an outpouring of public compassion and sympathy is possible in the wake of a sexual assault. But not for the victim. Behold, if you will, the abundance of it directed at its now-convicted assailants.

Long before 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma’lik Richmond were declared guilty in juvenile court on Sunday of raping a Steubenville, Ohio, classmate, they were already being cast as the story's victims. Those poor boys – young athletes with their whole lives ahead of them – until one fateful night changed everything. Just last week, ABC News declared that "the juvenile trial set to begin there is every parent's nightmare" -- because having your child on trial, not being raped and abused, is a parental nightmare. The story's final line? Not about the victim, but about the boys, "who face incarceration in a detention center until their 21st birthdays and the almost-certain demise of their dreams of playing football." And this weekend, when the verdict was handed down, CNN's Poppy Harlow lamented to Candy Crowley, "I've never experienced anything like it, Candy. It was incredibly emotional — incredibly difficult even for an outsider like me to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart." Crowley seemed to agree, pondering "the lasting effect of two young men being guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially." You know, essentially.

Steubenville football coach could be Ohio AG’s next target

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:38:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The head football coach at Steubenville High School and the owners of a house where an infamous 12-minute video was filmed could be investigated as Ohio prosecutors look into how adults responded to allegations of rape last year.

One day after a judge convicted two high school football players of raping the 16-year-old girl in August, Steubenville's top official said she welcomed a new, wide-ranging probe into possible wrongdoing connected with the rape.

The announcement of the guilty verdict was barely an hour old Sunday when state Attorney General Mike DeWine said he was continuing his investigation and would consider charges against anyone who failed to speak up after the summertime attack. That group could include other teens, parents, school officials and coaches for the high school's beloved football team, which has won nine state championships.

Authorities also said they won't put up with people harassing the accuser and took action Monday to prove it, arresting two girls suspected of threatening her well-being in Facebook and Twitter comments Sunday. The Jefferson County girls, ages 15 and 16, were being held in juvenile detention, Steubenville police Capt. Joel Walker said.

Four lessons from Steubenville

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:15:00 +0000

Thanks to a trial overseen by a juvenile court judge, justice in Steubenville was administered remarkably quickly. On Sunday morning, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were found delinquent of the rape of a sixteen-year-old girl, for which they will serve, respectively, a minimum of two years and one year each. But this isn't the end of the story, which went national with the help of Anonymous but was truly laid bare in the four days of testimony last week. The only unique aspect of the story was its prominence and the abundant, inarguable recorded evidence, so it's worth taking stock of what those factors tell us about rape in America:

The week in 10 pics

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

From Steubenville to Vatican City, a look at the stories that dominated the headlines

Can rape be stopped?

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:30:00 +0000

"I wouldn't say she was completely passed out but she wasn't in any state to make a decision for herself." That's what one of the witnesses in the Steubenville, Ohio, trial told police of the 16-year-old girl at the center of the case, according to ABC News. Perhaps that witness was one of the three football players who have not been charged but are expected to testify for the prosecution in the trial, which began Wednesday.

Since it still needs to be said, not being "in any state to make a decision for herself" meets the legal definition for rape across the U.S. So here's a question for that guy: What did he do to try to stop it?

According to the prosecutor's opening statement Wednesday, these witnesses saw one of the defendants, Trent Mays, try to force oral sex on the girl, but her mouth wouldn't open. They saw the other defendant, Ma'Lik Richmond, digitally penetrate the girl while she was passed out on a couch. Though the girls' friends apparently tried to prevent her from continuing on with the boys, so far there's been no indication the witnesses intervened with the boys who no one has disputed were capable of decision-making. And preliminary research shows that the intervention of such bystanders could make the difference in preventing rape.

Rape in the age of social media

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000

A video of a gleeful teenage boy crowing, “She is so raped" and “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson!” An Instagram image of the same girl of Steubenville, Ohio, limply borne by boys holding wrists and ankles. An 11-year-old girl whose gang rape in Texas last year was discovered by adults via cellphone video, a video she then had to watch when she took the stand. A teenage boy in Canada who posted photos on Facebook of a 16-year-old girl being gang-raped, sentenced last year to probation and ordered to write an essay on "the pros and cons of social media."

Steubenville city officials launch blog to share the “most accurate information” on rape case

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:17:00 +0000

In a surprising and defensive move, city and police officials of Steubenville, Ohio, have launched a blog to "disseminate the most accurate information" regarding the high school football team's alleged gang rape of a 16-year-old girl. According to Steubenville City Manager Cathy Davison, one of the goals of the site is to clear up what she believes is a misconception that the city put football above due process of the law. “When people are saying that our police department did not follow procedure, that the football team runs the city, that is not the case,” Davison said. “They went by the book. Everything was handled in an aboveboard fashion to make sure that the case can benefit from the fullest extent of the law.”

From the site's "about" section:

Anonymous leaks video of Steubenville high schoolers joking about gang rape

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:56:00 +0000

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.

Hackers hit Ohio school football team over gang rape

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 14:10:00 +0000

Hackers identifying as "KnightSec," an arm of Anonymous, attacked the website of an Ohio high school football team to demand a public apology for the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl reportedly perpetrated by players.

Last weekend, the website of the locally celebrated Steubenville High School Big Red football team was replaced with a note and a video from the hackers in typical Anonymous style -- a message from a Guy Fawkes mask and a computerized voice. KnightSec warned that it would release personal information including names and Social Security numbers of Big Red players and staff if an apology was not issued to the rape victim. The hackers also released "preliminary" information, which they called "a warning shot," publishing names, addresses, phone numbers, and names of parent of 13 players allegedly involved in the rape.

"The town of Steubenville has been good at keeping this quiet and their star football team protected," the KnightSec statement read.

Last week the New York Times reported on the disturbing assault in the small Ohio town. A 16-year-old girl was, according to prosecutors, gang raped and drag from party to party by a number of star football players while she was too drunk to consent. Via the Times: