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| Disturbing photos of young girl being carried by two young men. The photo gives a picture to the possible rape of this person. The rust belt city of Steubenville, Ohio is once again the center of a national controversy. |
Stuebenville, Ohio is the center of a national controversy this year. Two high school football stars are charged with the rape of a teenage girl.
A reminder to those reading, we advise that you take discretion in reading this. The article with commentary includes portions of The New York Times, Slate and the Associated Press. The individuals are innocent until proven guilty, and we here a Journal de la Reyna want justice served to those who committed this horrible act on this young girl.
This controversy attracted worldwide attention after Anonymous,
the hacktivist group unearth the social media of those involved in this sexual assault.
Also what this attracts is conservative ire and White supremacists. The fact that one of the accused is Black and the young girl is white will certainly rile these extremists up! This would lit up their forums with ugly racial slurs, word salads about Black on White crime, and of course an Obama name drop! This will be a reason for these extremists to paint Blacks as sex crazed NIGGERS who voted for that MUSLIM SOCIALIST WHO DISGRACED THIS COUNTRY with his GUBMINT GIVEAWAYS!
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| Steubenville, Ohio is American made city that sits on the banks of the Ohio River. |
The social media is a tool to help people connect. So far this year, Facebook surpassed over 1.3 billion in registered members. The social network is also a tool for the most controversial things. It's why most people work in education, the media, government, and private sector warns their employees not to engage in matters that may land them in the unemployment line.
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| Ma'lik Richmond one of the members involved. He participated in the so-called "Rape Crew" assault of a young girl. |
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are the most popular social networks in the country. They've entertained, angered and inspired many. But unfortunately, they can make people do the most stupidest things.
The two involved in this rape, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond are going to face the judge this month for their participation in the alleged sexual assault of the young girl. Many are seeking to put these guys in prison for life.
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| Trent Mays faces court date for rape and kidnapping. |
The New York Times reports that some people in and around Steubenville had gotten word that the night of fun on August 11 a party that was held by outgoing high school students might have taken a grim turn, and that members of the Steubenville High football team might have been involved.
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.
In one photograph posted on Instagram by a Steubenville High football player, the girl, who was from across the Ohio River in Weirton, West Virginia, is shown looking unresponsive as two boys carry her by her wrists and ankles. Twitter users wrote the words “rape” and “drunk girl” in their posts.
Rumors of a possible crime spread, and people, often with little reliable information, quickly took sides. Some residents and others on social media blamed the girl, saying she put the football team in a bad light and put herself in a position to be violated. Others supported the girl, saying she was a victim of what they believed was a hero-worshiping culture built around football players who think they can do no wrong.
On August 22, the possible crime made local news when the police came forward with details: two standout Steubenville football players — Mays, 16, from Bloomingdale, Ohio, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, from Steubenville — were arrested and later charged with raping a 16-year-old girl and kidnapping her by taking her to several parties while she was too drunk to resist.
The case is not the first time a high school football team has been entangled in accusations of sexual assault. But the situation in Steubenville has another layer to it that separates it from many others: It is a sexual assault accusation in the age of social media, when teenagers are capturing much of their lives on their camera phones — even repugnant, possibly criminal behavior, as they did in Steubenville in August — and then posting it on the Web, like a graphic, public diary.
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| Twitter post from Michael Nodianos. |
Within days of the possible sexual assault, an online personality who often blogs about crime zeroed in on those public comments and photographs and injected herself into the story, complicating it and igniting ire in the community. She posted the information on her site and wrote online that the police and town officials were giving the football players special treatment.
The city’s police chief begged for witnesses to come forward, but received little response. In time, the county prosecutor and the judge in charge of handling crimes by juveniles recused themselves from the case because they had ties to the football team.
“It’s a very, very small community here,” said Jefferson County Juvenile Judge Samuel W. Kerr, who recused himself. His granddaughter dated one of the football players initially linked to the incident. “Everybody knows everybody.”
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| Michael Nodianos, a player who shows off while firearm sits at the bottom. |
After more than two months in jail, they are under house arrest on rape charges, awaiting a trial that has been set for Feb. 13. Mays, a star wrestler, also faces a charge of disseminating photographs of a nude minor. The kidnapping charges were dropped.
The parents of the boys, who declined requests for extended interviews, said that the boys were innocent. The boys’ lawyers assert that the boys have been tried unfairly online, and vow they will be exonerated when all the facts are known.
The case has entangled dozens of people in and out of this town.
Three Steubenville High School athletes became witnesses for the prosecution and testified against Mays and Richmond, their friends, at a probable cause hearing in October. The crime blogger and more than a dozen people who posted comments on her Web site have been sued by a Steubenville football player and his parents for defamation. The girl’s mother, in several brief interviews last month, said her family had received threats, so extra police have been patrolling her neighborhood.
The victim is not a Steubenville High student; she attended a smaller, religion-based school, where she was an honor student and an athlete.
At the parties, the girl had so much to drink that she was unable to recall much from that night, and nothing past midnight, the police said. The girl began drinking early on, according to an account that the police pieced together from witnesses, including two of the three Steubenville High athletes who testified in court in October. By 10 or 10:30 that night, it was clear that the dark-haired teenager was drunk because she was stumbling and slurring her words, witnesses testified.
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| Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays photos were obtained by hackers and passed along the White supremacists websites. |
Some people at the party taunted her, chanted and cheered as a Steubenville High baseball player dared bystanders to urinate on her, one witness testified.
About two hours later, the girl left the party with several Big Red football players, including Mays and Richmond, witnesses said. They stayed only briefly at a second party before leaving for their third party of the night. Two witnesses testified that the girl needed help walking. One testified that she was carried out of the house by Mays and Richmond while she “was sleeping.”
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| Protest in Steubenville over the police and school district covering up the crime. |
She woke up long enough to vomit in the street, a witness said, and she remained there alone for several minutes with her top off. Another witness said Mays and Richmond were holding her hair back.
Afterward, they headed to the home of one football player who has now become a witness for the prosecution. That player told the police that he was in the back seat of his Volkswagen Jetta with Mays and the girl when Mays proceeded to flash the girl’s breasts and penetrate her with his fingers, while the player videotaped it on his phone. The player, who shared the video with at least one person, testified that he videotaped Mays and the girl “because he was being stupid, not making the right choices.” He said he later deleted the recording.
The girl “was just sitting there, not really doing anything,” the player testified. “She was kind of talking, but I couldn’t make out the words that she was saying.”
At that third party, the girl could not walk on her own and vomited several times before toppling onto her side, several witnesses testified. Mays then tried to coerce the girl into giving him oral sex, but the girl was unresponsive, according to the player who videotaped Mays and the girl.
The player said he did not try to stop it because “at the time, no one really saw it as being forceful.”
At one point, the girl was on the ground, naked, unmoving and silent, according to two witnesses who testified. Mays, they said, had exposed himself while he was right next to her.
Richmond was behind her, with his hands between her legs, penetrating her with his fingers, a witness said.
“I tried to tell Trent to stop it,” another athlete, who was Mays’s best friend, testified. “You know, I told him, ‘Just wait — wait till she wakes up if you’re going to do any of this stuff. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.’ ”
He said Mays answered: “It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
That boy took a photograph of what Mays and Richmond were doing to the girl. He explained in court how he wanted her to know what had happened to her, but he deleted it from his phone, he testified, after showing it to several people.
The girl slept on a couch in the basement of that home that night, with Mays alongside her before he took a spot on the floor.
When she awoke, she was unaware of what had happened to her, she has told her parents and the police. But by then, the story of her night was already unfolding on the Internet, on Twitter and via text messages. Compromising and explicit photographs of her were posted and shared.
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| The Guy Fawkes Mask represents Anonymous. They hack into controversial groups and exposes them to the world. |
Within a day, a family member in town shared with the girl’s parents more disturbing visuals: a photograph posted on Instagram of their daughter who looked passed out at a party and a YouTube video of a former Steubenville baseball player talking about a rape. That former player, who graduated earlier this year, also posted on Twitter, “Song of the night is definitely Rape Me by Nirvana,” and “Some people deserve to be peed on,” which was reshared on Twitter by several people, including Mays.
The parents then notified the police and took their daughter to a hospital. At 1:38 a.m. on August 14, the girl’s parents walked into the Steubenville police station with a flash drive with photographs from online, Twitter posts and the video on it. It was all the evidence the girl’s parents had, leaving the police with the task of filling in the details of what had happened that night. The police said the case was challenging partly because too much time had passed since the suspected rape. By then, the girl had taken at least one shower and might have washed away evidence, said McCafferty, the police chief. He added that it also was too late for toxicology tests to determine if she had been drugged.
“My daughter learned about what had happened to her that night by reading the story about it in the local newspaper,” the girl’s mother said.
“How would you like to go through that as a mother, seeing your daughter, who is your entire world, treated like that?” the mother said. “It was devastating for all of us.”
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| Big Red takes a big nosedive! |
Mays and Richmond were arrested August 22, about a week after the girl’s parents reported the suspected rape.
Anonymous got involved after a blogger reported that the Steubenville Police and school district were planning on dismissing the case based on lack of evidence. The internet group hacked into the social networks and unearth a disturbing video in which some of the students openly bragged about the crime.
The group thinks that school district and police are going to cover up the crime and they've rallied an online activism to have all members involved to be shamed for allowing two men to walk free while a victim suffers.
Steubenville is a rust belt city sits on near the banks of the Ohio River. This city is a part of the Wheeling, West Virginia metropolitan area. Ironton, Ohio, Stuebenville, Ohio, Weirton, West Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia are consolidated with the Pittsburgh/Washington, Pennsylvania metroplex. High school football is a growing theme in the once booming town of steel mills and coal.
All the information comes from the New York Times, Slate, The Huffington Post and the Associated Press.
The young men in this video are bragging about the party and the rape. This is disturbing. We here at Journal de la Reyna advise discretion when viewing this.
