One of the key words in this post will be censored. I've never known why and I contend that it ought not to be because it is sending a fundamentally wrong message.
I've been following this case for some months now, but given the recent media coverage, I'm not sure whether I should be surprised or not surprised that the topic has yet to be raised here.
Well, I think it's important, so I'm raising it now.
Relevant facts of the case:
A girl went to a party somewhere in Steubenville, a party at which several members of the local football team were present.
The girl subsequently became intoxicated to the point that she was for all intents and purposes unconscious.
Over the next several hours, several members of aforementioned football team performed and recorded unsolicited sexual acts on the girl. They then continued recording while they drove the unconscious girl to several other parties where the same happened. During this, it is verbally acknowledged on recording that the girl is unconscious, that the sexual acts being performed are without any form of consent, and that they willfully disregard this while continuing to perform the acts.
This footage is still publicly available as it was published on several social networking sites. I will refrain from linking to it here.
The girl is eventually dumped outside her own house. She is not aware of the events of the night until it is brought to her attention as a result of the distribution of recorded footage on networking sites.
Subsequent attempts to clarify what happened and to seek legal advice are met with resistance and threats in order to suppress the family of the girl. This appears to be because Steubenville's football players were involved.
It takes a sustained and somewhat-illegal campaign led by Anonymous to bring to public attention the specific details of the case, including the details of people they believe were positively identified in the footage, that the acts recorded constitute ****, and that prosecution ought to follow.
Eventually, two of the perpetrators are tried and convicted of ****.
Subsequently, just about every major broadcasting network in the US laments the destruction of two promising football careers and the tragedy of young men being convicted of ****.
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It's at this point that much of the world took notice and went "Wait, what?" While it is true that the girl did attend the party, and did become intoxicated, this incident is being portrayed such that the girl is the one at fault. And that the ones who ***** her (repeatedly and willfully, on video) are the victims. And every one of these media reports appear to conveniently forget what sexual assault actually is, and what standards we, as purportedly civilised people, are supposed to be holding ourselves to.
What I want to know is, can any of you tell me what the hell is going on in America? What's the real deal? What does the public actually think of this case, or are they only aware of the media party line and therefore agree that the boys are the victims? And what the **** is wrong with a country with institutions that rally behind patriotic hubris to the extent that it disregards the rights which it supposedly granted equally to its citizens? What kind of shameful pride is that?
Tell me it isn't so. This isn't a problem unique to the US, of course, seeing as Australia has had a similar problem with its own footy **** culture several years ago, and worse happens on a regular basis in India, not to mention other places... but thanks to the happenings in a small town in the US, and the subsequent distortion of justice and the media machine which is plain as day to anybody who doesn't live there, the spotlight, America, is now on you.
How can a ****ist be a victim? WTH is going on here? My god, this truly is an age of stupidity. However I just read that a guilty verdict has been passed, though the mother forgave them. The daughter apparently has not forgiven them. Real big surprise.
I only heard about this incident bc I read a ninja master fb friend of mine's status conversation on my news feed. But that's only because I don't watch the news, and with med school Facebook is my only means of contact with the outside world.
As part of the general public... I am sad that 3 lives were potentially "ruined" so to speak because of one night of dumb decisions, but the males involved are by no means victims in my eyes. I don't know why, but the people from the outside looking in will often times focus more on how sad it must be to be the perpetrators in these situations (usually some star athlete...)and ignore the true victim. I'm not sure if they're truly of the mindset of "ah, let 'em go... it wasn't that bad" or if they're set on booking, jailing, and branding them with a Scarlet R for the rest of their lives but still sad that a potential Micheal Phelps, David Beckham, etc just tore their golden ticket into the chocolate factory up.
In one of the Doctor Faustus movies (an older'ish one) there's a scene where a crowd of people are carrying him around and celebrating his genius intelligence for whatever thing he'd studied/done/discovered/whatever. Apparently, people used to maybe do that for smart people? (or still do somewhere...)... That's obviously not the case anymore... at least not around here anyway... But that's basically what happens for every athlete that can barely spell the word cat but can do other non-bookity things good. like kick a ball, or run into people hard. Part of our culture nowadays, at least American, is that we focus so much on sports growing up that almost everyone has dreamed about being an Olympic gold medalist at some point... not so much a Nobel prize winner ( or at least not nearly as much).
So, I can maybe see how seeing a great athlete go do something career ending would evoke sympathetic emotion from a lot of people who have experienced what it felt like to have to come to terms with "well... guess I'll never be getting a Gold medal :'( " and eventually ending their career. I'm sure that the actuality of it is a mixed bag of a little bit of everything. I wish we weren't so sports oriented for sure... I mean you can be one of the worst stupidest human beings on the planet and people will love you as long as you're a great athlete.
Like I said... I might shed a tear or two for the loss of the life style that could've been for the two stupid teenagers in between the fountain I have for the girl... but I'd totally brand a huge R right between their eyes w/o hesitation! The girl didn't ruin their lives or victimize them... They did it to themselves. It was justice well served (and late night rambling time on my part not efficiently spent)
She could hate them the rest of her life and I'd support her the whole way
It's funny how these kind of arguments come up repeatedly in **** cases. Lately, a Swiss tourist was gang ***** in India; I agree that camping where they did might not have been the best idea; nonetheless I completely condemn the act itself and find it ridiculous that some minister gave joint guilt on the tourists for not having gone to the police beforehand to check where to safely sleep.
Same with many other cases of ****, either the woman is accused of dressing too ****ty and thus "rovoking" the act, or accused of actually having wanted it herself.
All of this is just ridiculous. It's like saying that those footballers of Steubenville can't be blamed for taking advantage of a situation. What it says is that depending on the situation, some acts can be forgiven or belittled. This is just wrong, the act was done deliberately and only this counts. Those footballers were trialed for what they did, not what they were, and this is just fair.
In my eyes, there is a lot of punishment that needs to be thrown to those foolish enough to do anything even similar to this. It makes me cringe to think that people have actually came up with the term "legitimate ****" and use it at all.
As for how the people are blaming the woman, I'm only going to say this once: no **** victim is ever partially at fault. No victim secretly wants what was done to them. The fact that anybody would think this shows me that this world isn't as far along culturally as we claim to be, especially in the US.
I have hated unintelligence for a long time, and this case is a perfect example of why I do.
I'm normally not a violent man, however, I do believe rapists should be shot out of hand. I have no sympathy for those who commit ****. I don't give a flying f*ck about their "live being ruined". Good, they deserve to have their lives ruined, and then some, because they have permently ruined someone else's life. And two convictions? TWO? Everyone who participated, and everyone who tried to suppress this story should be charged and found guilty. What kind of society is this, where a young woman suffers a horrendous ordeal, only to be accused of being the one at fault. And the glorious, heroic football players are the victims? Bull****.
The obsession with this kind of thing makes me sick. Promising football players doesn't add up to anything. These guys could have ended up piss broke because sports often won't take you anywhere in life. And judging by their actions in this case they would have wound up in trouble sooner rather than later.
What I want to know is, can any of you tell me what the hell is going on in America? What's the real deal? What does the public actually think of this case,
It's how ours news reporting works, I believe. I've seen several articles about it, and let me quote parts that your post gave me new information on.
"Over the next several hours, several members of aforementioned football team performed and recorded unsolicited sexual acts on the girl. They then continued recording while they drove the unconscious girl to several other parties where the same happened. During this, it is verbally acknowledged on recording that the girl is unconscious, that the sexual acts being performed are without any form of consent, and that they willfully disregard this while continuing to perform the acts.
This footage is still publicly available as it was published on several social networking sites. I will refrain from linking to it here.
The girl is eventually dumped outside her own house. She is not aware of the events of the night until it is brought to her attention as a result of the distribution of recorded footage on networking sites.
Subsequent attempts to clarify what happened and to seek legal advice are met with resistance and threats in order to suppress the family of the girl. This appears to be because Steubenville's football players were involved.
It takes a sustained and somewhat-illegal campaign led by Anonymous to bring to public attention the specific details of the case, including the details of people they believe were positively identified in the footage, that the acts recorded constitute ****, and that prosecution ought to follow."
Here's what all the articles I read said, in summary.
A girl went to a party and two members of the local football team were accused of ****. The girl didn't really remember what had happened and there was some cell phone video that was supposedly deleted afterwards because the boys realized they had done something they shouldn't have.
I can't even trust the media reports on what happens off-field here (Australia), because it just gets so murky.
After some thought I've concluded that part of the outcry over the "tragedy" is plain ignorance, but the other part is incongruity between the "young promising football player" and the typical public image of the sex offender.
Well, I'm usually skeptical of using people as examples, but since the facts of the case have been established beyond even a smidgen of reasonable doubt, I'd go so far as to assert that this example ought to be used to acknowledge something that people seem unwilling to admit: that between humans, there's many ways of saying no, and not saying yes can be one of them.
And two convictions? TWO? Everyone who participated, and everyone who tried to suppress this story should be charged and found guilty
Welcome to the legal system. Where what is just isn't necessarily what is right apparently
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You know..I was in a great mood today until I heard this story and read up on it some more. How the hell people sympathize with these genuine ******** is beyond me. Not only did they blatantly know that they were performing rape..they just flat out didn't care! In fact..they (or at least the one in the video) seemed happy and proud of the fact!
On top of this all too..apparently 2 girls were recently arrested because they were harassing the rape victim. How so? From my understanding..apparently they were saying things along the lines of (ready for this) "you tore our family a part!" and subsequent insults towards the girl and how it was her fault about that it all happened.
And I'll leave off with the wonderful logic of the ******* in the video where the admittance of their rape is located Random person: "Dude, what if that was your daughter getting raped?!" *******: "But it isn't"
Elsewhere I asked, "what are YOU going to do about this if you're so outraged?"
Personally I would encourage everybody reading this to spread the real story, of the video, of how the victim's attorney was threatened and given the silent treatment, of how it took Anon's intervention to get anywhere with the case, of how there really should have been many more convictions, as many places as you can. Louder is better.
You can't trust the media on this one, you're going to have to be the voice of America for yourselves.
I'm still keeping up with ongoing coverage (from sources independent of the US media consortium), and am heartened to see at least that the two convicted seem to have apologised for their conduct, and that there's scope for the victim to move on from this incident (according to press statements from her lawyer). I've also caught wind of the rumour that further charges against other people may yet be laid. It's important for the sake of a system that purports to effect justice that everybody culpable is trialled.
Survey statistics indicate that up to 1 in 3 females have been the victim of some form of sexual misconduct. It's also the case that less than 1% of alleged sexual assaults results in a completed trial, because it's such a convoluted, expensive and exposing process. It's also rare (and in a twisted sense fortuitous) to have such ready access to self-incriminating evidence so thoughtlessly distributed across public channels.
Hopefully when those kids get out of juvie they'll take whatever opportunity they can get to serve a proper, lifelong penance, and not try to forget this sorry chapter.
Suppression of real justice on criminals due to hypothetical or present fame promotes inequality of citizens, and the USA has a rough, rough history of doing this, hell, even more than other developed countries (see: Chris Brown, OJ Simpson, Justin Timberlake, Michael Vick). Being the victim of a rape charge because the plaintiff was unconscious is akin to "It's not my fault I killed the family by setting their house on fire--they shouldn't have been asleep at the time". What's another tragic case where the media focused on the defendant and not at all on the victims? The school shooting where multiple children and faculty members were killed.
It shouldn't even be a matter of money either, since any coin flip you have a tragic, viral story where many people are tuning in to listen to developments. It's just a wrong, WRONG mindset these people are having.
Invoking Godwin's Law: "We shouldn't have gone to war with Hitler and pushed him to suicide: Who knows? He might have been a famous artist after WW2 was over!"
Wait..you're kidding..right? They are only going to juvie for their actions?
The only thing that amounts to any sense of the word judgment is they will register as sex offenders when they leave, meaning they will have a slim chance of having love again.
Wait..you're kidding..right? They are only going to juvie for their actions?
Personally given the record of the events, I would not dispute the finding that these actions were callous and depraved but also not specifically with intent (like the difference between a first and second degree murder). Both the defendants and victim were under 18. And I'm not sure which is worse, but being sent to an adult institution in this context would seem highly counterproductive. I'm thinking of the future here, but I suppose it remains to be seen whether the defendants' contrition is genuine, or only because they got caught.
