Oh dear god - Steubenville Ohio footballer rape case

[StuffezLaBouche]

Christ.
My heart leapt when I saw they'd been found guilty.
Ten I saw the sentence.
A fucking YEAR!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21823042
It's like the whole world conspires against victims of rape...

[NicholasTeakozy]

is a great take from a young woman blowing myths out of the water.

[SingingSilver]

Laci Green has made a vlog about the case, very good video (I don't know how to make links active sorry)

[TeiTetua]

I would very much like to hearmaybe it's going to be possible now the trial is overwhat people who defended the perpetrators here have to say about their own role. Like those two girls who are themselves in trouble for threatening the victim, or like the blogger's former best friend. I'd like to hear them give an explanation for their attitude; in a way those people are more interesting than the rapists, because their motivation is so murky. "You've done your best to punish the people who've called for the crime to be punishedwhy? What do you really want to see punished and what should be praised? And the treatment of crime is a public matterdo you want what you've done to be made public?"

[Hattifattner]

superb article comparing steubenville photos to Abu Ghraib...very thought provoking

[NicholasTeakozy]

The blogger who helped the investigation and got threatened, sued, and lost her best friend. Well played to her.

[BabyMakesTheBellyGoRound]

This case reminds me of the Listowel case a few years back,where a girl was sexually assaulted by a local man and people lined up to shake his hand in court. She was shunned by local people too.

[SingingSilver]

The society they are living in...

[TeiTetua]

If you want to feel worse about this business, "Two teenage girls were arrested in Ohio on Monday and accused of using social media to threaten the young victim in a high-profile rape trial that concluded this past weekend". What would persuade girls to do this to another girl?

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/steubenville-rape-case-twitter-threats_n_2904463.html

[SingingSilver]

I found the link through this article sourcefednews.com/cnn-reporter-labeled-rape-apologist-after-steubenville-update/

The petition is not just to demand an apology but also to, ?devote an hour long, prime time segment to rape, it?s victims, what can be done to prevent it, and how to change the culture that gives rise to this violent crime.?

[SingingSilver]

There is a petition demanding that CNN apologises. It has over 200,000 signatures www.change.org/petitions/cnn-apologize-for-your-disgusting-coverage-of-the-steubenville-rapists

[FastidiaBlueberry]

That Laurie Penny article is really good.

[FastidiaBlueberry]

That Michael Crook bloke is clearly a very dangerous man to women.

It's one thing to say you don't believe that someone was raped.

It's quite another thing to say that rape doesn't actually exist as a concept.

Most rape apologists do acknowledge that it exists and believe themselves to be disapproving of it.

Not this one...

[BabyMakesTheBellyGoRound]

That CNN clip made me very angry,with all this talk of the lasting effect on the rapists,WHAT ABOUT THE LASTING EFFECTS ON THE VICTIM?!!

[notimefors]

Has anyone linked the Laurie Penny New Statesman article yet?
link

[mungotracy]

Slug thats cool if thats the case. Not all US states remove juries from juvenille trials unlike in the UK....

Nor does it render moot that no unbiased jury could have been appointed in any case due too social media.

[slug]

mungotracy there was no jury because the boys were tried as juveniles.

[MiniTheMinx]

Thank you NicholasTeakozy

I agree with some of the posts saying that the young men didn't feel remorse only sorry for being found guilty.

"One of the young men, Ma?lik Richmond, as that sentence came down, he collapsed,? the CNN reporter recalled, adding that the convicted rapist told his attorney that ?my life is over, no one is going to want me now.?

to the end thinking about themselves.

However it is society that teaches these young men their values, it is media that portrays women as toys and teaches young women not to aspire to be anything else. It is society that peddles the idea that there are good women and there are women who deserve to be raped. Pornography shapes these young men's sexuality and tells them that women say no when they really mean yes. And at the centre of all this, hundreds of years of socialisation that tells men that women who drink, women who dress in a certain way, women who are poor, women who are not their daughters or wives, who behave in anyway unlike the virgin mary are to be despised, should be held in utter contempt. It is these women that men should take out their anger on because they feel unequal to other men. These young men are the foot soldiers to the patriarchy, they too are victims in this war to maintain class hierarchies and white male privilege over all of us. Its no different to sending working class young men into Afghanistan to have their legs blown off. Its all done to maintain social power over other men. We women the victims in all this.......well we were never that important anyway

[mungotracy]

@pretzeltime:

"Yet the boys should be given sympathy? And no punishment? "

I cant find anyone with that reaction at all....please link the post.

[mungotracy]

As Sassh points out Sentencing is not actually complete.....before people start being righteous.... lets wait and see before the usual baying mob starts..... They were found guilty that is a win.

The jury was probably excluded because due to the internet.... it was no longer possible to find unaffected jurors rendering them all ineligible.....blame social media for that. Its a two sided coin and can severely damage the chances of a conviction happening. Anonymous is not a fit group to comment on any issue and their actions could well have undermined the entire case.

Its always tricky in the states as the law differs in each state and sometimes by county as well.....its a federal system. Unless we have an expert on Ohio procedure.... We will have to wait a while to get the full result.

[MrSlant]

Wow NT, what a fantastic, thought provoking piece, I've always had a lot of respect for Henry Rollins but now I think he should be president!

[PretzelTime]

My questions are actually sincere, I can't understand this type of reaction at all.

If the girl is to blame for being drunk and near boys - like a tourist is to blame for getting to close to wild lions and eaten - then it's like saying that we should see all boys like wild violent beasts who are dangerous to humans.
Yet the boys should be given sympathy? And no punishment? Lions who eat humans are shot. Does this make teenage boys evil aggressive beasts AND poor little innocents at the same time in those people's minds, how does that work?

[wrongsideoftheroad]

"A group of teenage boys have done something completely inhumane, why are people talking about girls drinking?"

^ this. A hundred times this ^

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Thanks for that blogpost, NT.

[PretzelTime]

A group of teenage boys have done something completely inhumane, why are people talking about girls drinking? I mean I know we've got patriarchy and stuff but I don't understand people.

Can someone explain why a victim stops being a victim if she had been drinking?

I don't see any logic in that, a group of guys attacking someone who is even more defenseless because they're drunk should make their punishment more severe, right? Because they cowardly attacked someone who were even less capable of defending themselves than usual.

And drinking is what you often do at parties.

[NicholasTeakozy]

Henry Rollins wrote the following on Sunday:-

"For the last couple of hours, I have been thinking of the verdict that was reached in what is now known as the Steubenville rape case.

Since all involved are minors, I won?t use anyone?s name. Two juvenile males were found delinquent of the charges and will be, as far as I understand, incarcerated in a juvenile detention facility until they are twenty-one years of age.

There is, I guess, cell phone generated video content of parts of the crime. It went ?viral? on the internet and brought attention to the events.

I got through a few minutes of it but was too disgusted to watch the rest.

The case, the verdict and the surrounding circumstances open up a huge conversation.

These are a few of the things that I have been thinking about.

After reading several posts online, I was not surprised at the vast range of sentiments expressed. Many of the postings were of outrage that the two found delinquent were not tried as adults so they would face much longer sentences. You might not know, but in some states, this sentence would be decades long. Many of the posts spoke of the damage done to the victim and the life she will have now. One person suggested caning the two young men. Many others were angered at the deification of high school football players and how they often receive special treatment. You can read this stuff all day if you want.

After reading posts for quite awhile, I thought first about the two young men. I wondered if the years in the facility will ?help? them. What, exactly does one ?learn? in one of these places? That is to say, after five years locked away, does the idea of assaulting a woman seem like the wrong thing to do, more than if you were incarcerated for one year? Would you be ?more sorry? about what you did? Is that possible? Or, would you just be more sorry for yourself about where your actions landed you? At what point do you get ?better?, how many years in one of these places does that take?

What made these young people think that that what they did was ok? What was in their upbringing, the information and morals instilled in them that allowed them to do what they did, minute after minute, laughing, joking, documenting it and then calling it a night and going home? Out of all the people who were witness to what happened, why wasn?t there someone putting a stop to it?

What I am attempting to get at, and I apologize if I am not being clear enough is that this is a failure on many levels. Parents, teachers, coaches, peers all come into play here. I am not trying to diffuse blame or lessen the awfulness of what happened but I want to address the complexity of the cause in an effort to assess the effect so it can be prevented.

Some might say that the two going to the youth facility are as much victims as the young women who was assaulted. I do not agree. The two are offenders. What they did was obviously wrong. That being said, we cannot end the discussion at that point and expect things to change.

I have yet to say anything about the damage done to the young woman involved. It is ironic and sad that the person who is going to do a life sentence is her.

As a testament to the horrific power of sexual assault, I encourage you to see, yet cannot recommend the documentary The Invisible War about sexual assault in the military. invisiblewarmovie.com/. The reason I say that I cannot recommend it is that it is so well done, so clear and devastating that it will put you through quite a wringer. I do hope you see it but damn, it?s hard. In the interviews with women who have been assaulted by fellow members, the damage that has been done to these good people is monumental.

Many people are angry that more time was not given to the offenders. This seems to be the prevailing sentiment. I understand the anger but don?t know if adding a decade onto their sentences would be of any benefit. To me, the problem that needs to be addressed is where in the information chain were the two offenders made to understand that what they did was not wrong on every possible level? You can execute them both tomorrow but still, there is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

It?s a situation where you would like to be able to point a finger and say, that?s the reason and be done. You have to be careful when you do this because it?s easy to miss.

I think to a great degree, we humans still divide ourselves into two species, even though we are monotypic. There are males and females. We see them as different and not equal. Things get better when women get more equality. That is a bit obvious but I think it leads to better results up the road. If it?s a man?s world as they say, then men, your world is a poorly run carnage fest.

It is obvious that the two offenders saw the victim as some one that could be treated as a thing. This is not about sex, it is about power and control. I guess that is what I am getting at. Sex was probably not the hardest thing for the two to get, so that wasn?t the objective. When you hear the jokes being made during the crime, it is the purest contempt.

So, how do you fix that? I?m just shooting rubber bands at the night sky but here are a few ideas: Put women?s studies in high school the curriculum from war heroes to politicians, writers, speakers, activists, revolutionaries and let young people understand that women have been kicking ass in high threat conditions for ages and they are worthy of respect.

Total sex ed in school. Learn how it all works. Learn what the definition of statutory rape is and that it is rape, that date rape is rape, that rape is rape.

In the spirit of equal time, sites like Huffington Post should have sections for male anatomy hanging out instead of just the idiotic celebrity ?side boob? and ?nip slip? camera ops. I have no idea what that would be like to have a camera in my face at every turn, looking for ?the? shot. I know what some of you are saying. ?Then why do they wear clothes like that unless they want those photos taken?? I don?t know what to tell ya. Perhaps just don?t take the fuckin picture? Evolve? I don?t know.

Education, truth, respect, equality?these are the things that can get you from a to b very efficiently.

It must be an awful time for the parents of all three of these people and their relatives and I hope they all get to a better place soon.

What else? That?s all I?ve got. Thanks for reading this. Henry"

I've read it a couple of times, and think he, a punk rock vocalist, has put it better than the experts employed by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Fox et al. This sentence Education, truth, respect, equality?these are the things that can get you from a to b very efficiently. sums up a viable solution and demonstrates that feminism still has miles to go to educate our young men to not rape.

Also, he's right that rape isn't about sex; it's about power, control, humiliation and fear.