Steubenville Rape Trial: "These kids didn't know what they were seeing was rape," says advocate

[marble falls]

36. True. But in that this girl was the only girl there, did everybody think this was consensual? ....

When I was 15 or 16, a girl that was widely known for 'entertaining' several boys at a time was entertaining in a friends garage. A friend of mine was there and though he never laid a hand on her being intimidated by a crowd was arrested with the rest of them and was sent to the Boy's Industrial School.

If in the mid-sixties it was wrong and we knew it was wrong, teenagers in the age of YouTube, internet and cell phones know its wrong -especially if the girl is not actively participating, drug/drunked into it by house full of people who were in on it by being told about it before hand. They may have been 'witnessing' but that is not the same as being-innocent bystanders.

By the same token. I was in my thirties at a stag bachelor party and when the only girl showed up with a six pack I thought she went there by accident. After I found out why she was there - hired- I left embarrassed that this was going on and that I a veteran, collage graduate, survivor of the swinging sixties didn't figure it out before someone asked me if I wanted to participate.

This whole incident really, really bothered me. I am shocked that there is no empathy anymore. It could have been their sister or girlfriend. I saw some of the videos made after the fact by some of the witnesses and it was loud raucous and self congratulating. They knew and they tried to be totally uncooperative with investigating authorities after the fact. It was actually one of these witness videos that actually broke the investigation open. School authorities and coaches of the teams most of the participants played on also tried to clamp this one closed with the connivance local officials including law enforcement.

Unfortunately for us all, you are dead on the money - kids can be tricked into proffering testimony and unclear memory and the length of time from the crime to the trial will kill the effectiveness of their memory of the truth.

Justice will be incomplete in any case.

See you on the next thread.