When an Indian woman was gang raped and murdered last week it drew national attention here in the U.S., as well as much deserved outrage. However when a 16 year old girl was allegedly gang raped by fellow students in an eastern Ohio town last summer, there was no national outrage. National coverage didn’t even occur until last month, when the New York Times wrote about it.
First here’s a little background on the story. Steubenville, Ohio is located about an hour west of Pittsburgh on the Ohio/West Virginia border. It’s a typical town in eastern Ohio that has a rapidly dying economy from the closing of steel mills. Live in the town revolves around Big Red, their high school football team that has won that state title 9 times and even produced some NFL players.
At a big, end of summer party last August many of the residents, including the football team got together. At that party two players from the football team allegedly carried an unconscious 16 year old girl by her ankles and wrists and proceeded to rape her as others watched on. They later dropped the girl off in front of her parents house.
The incident also wasn’t kept secret. While the crimes were going on numerous other party goers took to social media, joking about what was happening and posting pictures and videos with captions like “rape”.
The two students have been arrested and charged, but controversy is still happening. So far a judge and prosecutor had to recuse themselves from the case. There are also reports of lot of other “connections” that are helping out the perpetrators instead of the victim. The Atlantic has a great rundown of this.
All of this has outraged the hacker group Anonymous and they have come to the defense of the girl. They have hacked numerous emails and websites to try and give the girl and her family some sense of justice. Here’s a video they released of one witness joking about the rape and even talking about them urinating on the girl. I’ll warn you, if you have any decency at all, this video will make your skin crawl.
It seems that we are now living in a time where justice is coming from groups like Anonymous. We have to pray for unknown hackers to help shed light on the heinous crimes that occur in our society and that some of our people try to cover up. For this Anonymous should be named heroes. I for one am glad we have them on the side of good and decency.