Stuebenville: Read. Tweet. Repeat.

January 4, 2013 at 11:41 am (women's issues)

I don’t have anything new to add to this conversation or this story. I just want people to read it and spread the word, because if social media is good for anything, every once in a while it’s good for bringing horrible dark stuff into the light.

The basics of the story:

In Stuebenville, Ohio, high school football is a big fucking deal.

On August 11, 2012, several dudes from the Big Red High School football team drugged a 16 year old girl, raped her unconscious body, dragged her bodily to several parties, took video and pictures of her, urinated on her, and eventually dropped her off in front of her parents house.

On August 27, 2012, two of those dudes (Trent Mays and Malik Richmond), were charged with rape and kidnapping. Many people in the town jumped to defend the boys charged, attacking the victim, and dismissing the entire incident. A volunteer head coach for the Big Red team told the New York Times that the victim made the whole thing up as an excuse for a night of partying. The gallows humor of these denials is that the boys themselves made pictures, videos, and basically live tweeted the entire incident. One kid, Michael Nadianos, goes on for 12 full minutes about how passed out the girl was when they raped her. I couldn’t watch the entire video, but you can see it in the links below, as well as some of the pictures and tweets.

This group of friends, some on the team and some not, are known around the school as”The Rape Crew”.

In a town where football is such a big fucking deal, the prosecution for a case like this is an uphill battle- in that the prosecutors don’t seem to want to prosecute. They couldn’t seem to find any of the videos, tweets, or pictures that the Rape Crew took during the incident. The head prosecutor tried to talk the victim and her family out of filing charges because it would hurt her too much. This prosecutor, by the way, is the MOTHER OF ONE OF THE KIDS IN THE RAPE CREW AND ALSO ON THE BIG RED TEAM.

Eventually, for both Mays and Richmond, the kidnapping charges were dropped and the rape charges were transferred to the juvenile court. Both men were released on bail.

I didn’t hear about this until Anonymous decided to get involved. They dug up literally everything on everyone involved, and they are urging people keep talking about this until we decide that justice and a young girl’s dignity is worth more than a fucking football team.

Links: Anonymous treasure trove of info on the case- LocalLeaks, a quicker overview at RawStory, and coverage from Jezebel