What the hell is wrong with Steubenville, OH?

Farscry wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
I mean, this one is so bad, that the prosecutor's son is one of the accused, and she's using the full powers of her office to try to hide and cover up and obfuscate.

The fact that she didn't recuse or even log a concern about being in charge of this... disbar. That is the most ridiculously idiotic thing I've read, and that includes the guys that weren't there bragging about having taken part of making jokes about it. Teenage boys like to brag, surprise. The subject matter? Horrifying, but not out of line of the crap I heard in the locker room during my forced gym credits. A mother who tries to get her kid and his friends off for rape? How was that even given to her?

Probably more common than we'd like to think.

My dad was a teacher at a correctional facility, and of course everyone there protests their innocence. One guy in particular though became of interest to my dad because this guy was also a teacher; or rather, a former teacher. Had been a teacher at a high school, and wound up in prison over claims that he had engaged in innapropriate behavior with students. My dad got interested enough in the case that he started digging into the details.

Turns out, the specifics were that the guy was accused of showing sexually explicit content on a tv to two female students after school. One of those two students was the daughter of a cop. A cop whose cousin was the presiding judge over the case. A judge who was allowed to shut down the defendant's appeal to have the case heard by a different judge due to the judge's relationship to one of the two girls he was accused of behaving inappropriately with.

That girl was the only one of the two who testified at the trial. There were no other first-hand witnesses, just circumstantial evidence. The other girl did not testify.

I don't remember what else my dad dug up about the case, but it was clear that it was a straightforward he-said-she-said case, involving a student who was failing this teacher's class and allegedly had antagonistic relationship with said teacher. There were no other complaints or witnesses who came forward against the teacher.

The teacher lost his license and was slapped with, IIRC, 15 years in prison. His attempts to appeal were also shot down by the same judge.

Yay small-town Louisiana!

Wow, no kidding!? How is it even remotely possible for someone with any type of relation to the accuser sit as judge for such a trial? Anyone with any ties to the accuser for that matter? That is absolutely ridiculous.

I really don't understand. You'd think that would be in "How to Avoid Judicial Conflict of Interest 101" or something.

Yay small-town Louisiana!

Same reason one of the schools I student-taught at had a male-teacher initiated policy of we didn't say anything about dress code. Reason? School board made it clear they weren't going to back up a claim of inappropriate behavior from a student/her parents if they didn't like that a teacher said they were showing off their belly/legs/whatever else.

If folks in Ohio want to file an ethics complaint.

Cough

Demosthenes wrote:
Yay small-town Louisiana!

Same reason one of the schools I student-taught at had a male-teacher initiated policy of we didn't say anything about dress code. Reason? School board made it clear they weren't going to back up a claim of inappropriate behavior from a student/her parents if they didn't like that a teacher said they were showing off their belly/legs/whatever else.

At my wife's school, before they instituted a dress code/uniform, the male teachers would always go to female teachers to get them to tell the student that she is wearing something inappropriate. Granted, this may also have something to do with a false (as determined in a court of law via the retraction of the claims) accusation if sexual assault.

Demosthenes wrote:
Yay small-town Louisiana!

Same reason one of the schools I student-taught at had a male-teacher initiated policy of we didn't say anything about dress code. Reason? School board made it clear they weren't going to back up a claim of inappropriate behavior from a student/her parents if they didn't like that a teacher said they were showing off their belly/legs/whatever else.

At my wife's school, before they instituted a dress code/uniform, the male teachers would always go to female teachers to get them to tell the student that she is wearing something inappropriate. Granted, this may also have something to do with a false (as determined in a court of law via the retraction of the claims) accusation if sexual assault.

Semi-relevant. Ouch.

Rape is the only crime for which 'perceived heinousness' is inversely proportional to 'likelihood of legal or social consequences for the perpetrator'. Yay institutionalized sexism!

4xis.black wrote:

Rape is the only crime for which 'perceived heinousness' is inversely proportional to 'likelihood of legal or social consequences for the perpetrator'. Yay institutionalized sexism!

Seriously. I can't count the number of times i've seen people say "well it wasn't rape-rape".

Because rape is only rape if you jump out of the bushes wearing a mask and holding a rag of chloroform.

Prederick wrote:
4xis.black wrote:

Rape is the only crime for which 'perceived heinousness' is inversely proportional to 'likelihood of legal or social consequences for the perpetrator'. Yay institutionalized sexism!

Seriously. I can't count the number of times i've seen people say "well it wasn't rape-rape".

Because rape is only rape if you jump out of the bushes wearing a mask and holding a rag of chloroform.

I don't think you've given us enough information about the "victim" to decide whether or not that scenario is "rape-rape".

How long until "rape-rape" starts getting questioned about whether it's REAL "rape-rape"?

I don't think you've given us enough "information" about the "victim" to decide whether or not that "scenario" is "rape-rape".

FIXED for more quotiness and "sarcasm" =P

Farscry wrote:

How long until "rape-rape" starts getting questioned about whether it's REAL "rape-rape"? :(

It was consensual, she said that she like-liked me back. And we all know what that means.

Hypatian wrote:

Semi-relevant. Ouch.

Very disheartening. I just wish humans were better people. The way we treat each other sometimes is just appalling. We may pride ourselves on our legal systems, but it often just feels like the world is dog-eat-dog.

That's how a justice system where you only lock up people you're really sure are guilty should look. The incarceration rate for most crimes should probably look something like that.

Otherwise, what you end up with is a whole bunch of innocent people wrongly jailed; they're being excluded from that chart.

All you see there are the false negatives, but the false positives are much more important.

Here is a site contesting that infographic's accuracy. It includes this, um, spectacular passage:

Beaulieu also considers everything reported in victimization surveys as a rape are felonious acts. This is an important point that isn’t discussed very often. Do feminists and other activists think that, say, a man who has sex with a woman who is too drunk to consent should be charged with a felony? Personally, I don’t think that is always a felony. If you could convince me it is a felony, I don’t think it is worth prison time, but feminists might believe that it is. How much prison time does that kind of rape warrant? How many men who are convicted of rape take pleas down to probation and fines? These are tangible punishments based upon the justice system’s available resources.

Uh, yeah dude, I think "feminists and other activists" probably do think that, as do a few other groups of people. One group that possibly does not think that is rapists.

Another purported inaccuracy in that infographic: Each stick figure seems to denote an individual person when in fact the numbers on which it is based denote individual instances of sexual assault; thus it isn't actually that many individual people who get away with it, it's more like a smaller number who get away with it over and over again. Charming.

If a man and woman are both drunk and have sex did they rape each other?

Baron Of Hell wrote:

If a man and woman are both drunk and have sex did they rape each other?

FELONS

People who are too drunk to utter any kind of verbal response won't be conscious enough to act. Two such people cannot possibly have sex with each other beyond one body piling on top of the other randomly.

What happened in Steubenville is beyond terrible, and any attempt to cover it up is unforgivable. That said, why the hell are we (media coverage, not GWJ specifically) focused on some kid laughing about it? Kids are idiots. That's not the story here. The story is that a woman passed out and a bunch of people used her as a sex toy.

LobsterMobster wrote:

What happened in Steubenville is beyond terrible, and any attempt to cover it up is unforgivable. That said, why the hell are we (media coverage, not GWJ specifically) focused on some kid laughing about it? Kids are idiots. That's not the story here. The story is that a woman passed out and a bunch of people used her as a sex toy.

Because the first rule of Rape Club is that you don't talk about Rape Club.

I wish I was being strictly sarcastic with that statement.

IANAL; my understanding is that you can not legally consent while intoxicated, be it sexual activity or legal documents.

However under a definition of rape that broad a huge portion of sexual activity would be 'rape', had a glass of wine with dinner? No sex for you. Even if we follow a hard definition of 'intoxication' as we do with driving rather than a fuzzy one I doubt the majority of people are going to incorporate a breathalyzer into foreplay, perhaps that's something we should be teaching along with other safe sex talks though. This is a discussion perhaps better for another thread at this point however.

LobsterMobster wrote:

The story is that a woman passed out and a bunch of people used her as a sex toy.

Indeed, truly horrid.

krev82:

If the person is passed out, I'm fairly sure that that's a bright red signal saying that he or she cannot consent to pretty much anything. Sexual activity conducted at that point should be fairly obvious to anyone as rape. This case speaks for itself. The horrible thing is that this isn't universal consensus, and how the parents of these boys can possibly say that their boys are innocent, given the evidence so far. Clearly, the problem is systemic and fairly widespread in the town itself.

From a detached, analytical perspective, it seems unlikely that this is simply the result of athlete worship alone. There's a hefty amount of rape culture contributing to the situation.

LobsterMobster wrote:

What happened in Steubenville is beyond terrible, and any attempt to cover it up is unforgivable. That said, why the hell are we (media coverage, not GWJ specifically) focused on some kid laughing about it?

Because supposedly that kid was either present or involved. The video is 12 minutes of him expressing joy and excitement as he describes in graphic detail what they did to her and drops a few names. It's also unclear if the video was created as the rape was occurring or afterward.

Did they find any conclusive evidence on whether she was drugged or not?

Ohio allows for a mistaken belief or ignorance defence for rape.

This is the sticking point people need perspective on. When we talk criminal you also MUST prove intent. Exceptions are rare-certain statutory rape laws.

And this is where the variety in the US comes from. Some states require a victim to refuse, others require conscious consent, most are somewhere between the two like Ohio.

I'm curious as to whether there has been any professional backlash to the prosecuter mother for not recusing herself immediately.

fangblackbone wrote:

Did they find any conclusive evidence on whether she was drugged or not?

Why should this be significant?

Alcohol is in every way a drug. At the point where a person is passed out from alcohol, it's kind of redundant to sedate her with anything else. This indicates that she was definitely drugged, though it is a legal drug (for a minor?) and it was largely self-administered. Does it make any difference to a rape case which particular drug was administered and for what reasons?

LarryC wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

Did they find any conclusive evidence on whether she was drugged or not?

Why should this be significant?

Alcohol is in every way a drug. At the point where a person is passed out from alcohol, it's kind of redundant to sedate her with anything else. This indicates that she was definitely drugged, though it is a legal drug (for a minor?) and it was largely self-administered. Does it make any difference to a rape case which particular drug was administered and for what reasons?

Maybe it does matter, from a legal standpoint. Drawing a parallel to murder, first degree murder is premeditated, and can result in a stiffer sentence at trial from unpremeditated second degree murder.

Evidence of drugging, particularly a drug that isn't self-administered (e.g. a rufie) suggests that the crime was premeditated.

Evidence of drugging, particularly a drug that isn't self-administered (e.g. a rufie) suggests that the crime was premeditated.

This.

I believe it may also make the mother prosecutor who tried to sweep it under the rug and accessory.