NOTE: What follows is an article from ABC News about the police interviews given by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department during the investigation that led to Trent Mays’ and Ma’Lik Richmond’s convictions. ABC News continues the faulty rape culture narrative that pretty much every other news network latched onto.
I will warn you: what follows is maddening, infuriating, and disrespectful to the Jane Doe victim in the Steubenville rape case. I will make it my duty to report where major news coverage errs on reporting rape cases and trials. The following article was taken from tonight’s 20/20 that is currently airing on ABC. I will watch all coverage so that there is someone to report where it messes up, so the rest of you don’t have to.
I am also bolding where ABC News messed up in their coverage, and labeling what’s wrong.
You have been warned!
In videotaped police interviews from the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case that the public has not seen, police talk to many of the teenage partiers who witnessed the 16-year-old victim getting more and more intoxicated. (Victim Shaming)
“I could tell that she was gradually getting more drunk and worse throughout the night,” said Farrah Marcino, 16. “Just, like, that she couldn’t, like, she didn’t walk.” (Victim Shaming)
RELATED: Parents of Steubenville Rape Victim Want ‘Everything Over’
“She was a mess,” said Anthony Craig, 18. “She wasn’t responding. ”
The question many are asking now may be: Why did Craig and others stand by and watch the victim being sexually assaulted rather than call for help? And why did they spread the assault around town, turning it into a social media event?
Watch the full story on “20/20″ tonight at 10 p.m. ET
Craig told detectives that he took two pictures at the home where the assault occurred. Those photos were deleted and never recovered, but police did find two nude photos of the victim on high school football player Trent Mays’ cell phone.
On the night of the crime, tweets were posted and a YouTube video was made joking about it. An Instagram photo of Mays, 17, and fellow football player Ma’lik Richmond, 16, carrying the seemingly unconscious body of the victim was also uploaded. (Victim Blaming — blaming the rape of the Jane Doe victim on her being unconscious, even hinting that she wasn’t unconscious and possibly consented to the rape)
Mays and Richmond were convicted of rape Sunday for penetrating the victim with their fingers and sentenced to at least one year in a juvenile detention center.
“She was passed out,” Craig told detectives. “That’s when they picked her up, and they carried her out of the house.”
“She wanted to go with Trent. Like, we just kept trying to tell her: ‘You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to go with them,’” Marcino said. “I just let her do what she want[ed], which I understand was wrong.” (Rape Enablism, Rape Apologism — the girl was drugged, therefore she COULDN’T understand what was going on!! That’s why she didn’t listen, she couldn’t!)
Investigators want to know how so many honor students, athletes and all-American kids could just stand by and let it all happen.
RELATED: Steubenville Social Media: By the Numbers
“Think about the number of students that witnessed this, that saw this,” said Denice Evans, a documentarian. “What about the ones that didn’t text or tweet, but that were there watching. … If you’re drinking alcohol – a lot of teens are drinking alcohol – they have just entered the phase where decision-making is completely gone out the window. There’s no deciding right or wrong in a moment.” (Victim Shaming, Victim Blaming — Even though alcohol can inhibit judgment, it does not excuse the actions of the Steubenville Rape Crew! Unless the rest of the teens were so inebriated that they couldn’t realize what they were doing, they knew exactly what they were doing)
Evans said there was no impulse control when an adolescent brain was mixed with alcohol, social media and power. (Victim Shaming, Victim Blaming — Alcohol does not excuse rape or sexual assault that requires cognition and judgment to occur.)
Days before the guilty verdict was delivered, Richmond shared with ABC News, exclusively, his mindset that night.
“I realize that I did, I was doing wrong by drinking and partying, you know, after dark,” he said. “But I really did not, I didn’t rape anybody. I didn’t witness a rape going on. And if I would have thought that somebody was being raped or anything like that, I would have stopped it.
“I really just think that everybody was just, had a few drinks in them and they wasn’t really thinking,” he said. “I think everybody was just out of their minds, see.” (Victim Blaming, Victim Shaming — This is the most shocking of the statements here, considering that ABC News considered this worthy of airing tonight! You basically have a convicted rapist (Ma’Lik Richmond) apologizing for underage drinking and underage partying, but not for the rape of the Jane Doe victim that HE HIMSELF WENT WITH TRENT MAYS TO THE DIFFERENT PARTIES AND HIMSELF DIGITALLY PENETRATED THE JANE DOE VICTIM!!! Either Ma’Lik has horrible short-term and long-term memory, or he is legitimately believing that he didn’t do anything wrong by sticking his hands and fingers into the Jane Doe victim’s vagina without her consent, and that he didn’t do anything wrong by intentionally drugging the Jane Doe victim and allowing her to drink to the point that the alcohol and drugs mixed to successfully render her unconscious so the Steubenville Rape Crew could have its way with her. I vote for the latter. ABC News has officially set itself apart in how horrible its news coverage can be. CNN’s coverage looks tame compared to ABC News’s tonight!
![quickhits:
Are rightwing blogs allowing themselves to be led astray by a tabloid again?
The rightwing blogosphere demonstrated their endless gullibility in the Boston bombing by running with the New York Post’s ridiculously bad reporting. The New York tabloid had misidentified suspects — twice in a row — and reported 12 dead. The first clue that this was all wrong should’ve been that the Post was almost alone in their reporting of these “facts” and that the only other sources reporting them cited the Post.
Now the wingnut blogosphere is once again running with a tabloid news story. This time, from the UK’s Daily Mirror, which is running a story about the FBI investigating a 12-person “sleeper cell” in relation to the bombings. Once again, almost no one else is reporting this and it’s all based on unnamed sources. While it’s too soon to say it’s not true, it’s absolutely true to say it looks a whole lot like BS — especially considering the tabloid’s recent history of inaccuracy.
Once again, I find myself wondering how on Earth anyone can ever take these people seriously.
[photo released by FBI]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/4b860b2d82a7a7dd39cb3a249cec9629/tumblr_mlm0cq6Ldk1qfengno1_500.jpg)
![theatlantic:
Fact-Checking the NRA Press Conference
“How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”
To our knowledge, no one — not even the NRA — has proposed a national database of the mentally ill. Since similar databases of sex offenders have done little to protect children from sex crimes, that seems unlikely to help. Also, few organizations have done more than the NRA to block the registration of anything, as they work vigorously to defeat gun registration databases wherever they find them.
Read more. [Image: AP]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/f9972ba62782bd6f8c355dfdde8ecac5/tumblr_mfeagiXwJG1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
