• Fri, Mar 15 - 8:11 am ET

Day Two Of The Steubenville Rape Trial – ‘Reno Took Care Of It’

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Please note that the following may need a trigger warning for those of you who are survivors of sexual assault, abuse, or rape. Thank you.

 

Day two of the Steubenville rape trial involved a lot of evidence regarding cell phones and other electronic devices and methods of retrieval of these devices by law enforcement. A forensics expert with Ohio’s crime lab, JoAnn Gibb, testified about texts that were involved with the incidents that took places on the evening of August 11th and the early morning hours of August 12th, and the subsequent aftermath when the 16-year-old rape victim attempted to piece together what occurred during the parties. To try and put this all in perspective, the crime lab retrieved 362,972 from 17 different cell phones about the dates in question.

The young victim’s texts mainly focused on her trying to piece together what happened to her the night before. From an August 12th exchange between the victim and her ex-boyfriend:

Ex-boyfriend: Are you alright? (He sent this message numerous times until she replied)

Jane Doe: I’m good I need to find my phone tho and Trent went through my phone and looked at all our sh*t but what happened last night?

Ex-boyfriend: You were like dead. Then they took you to Mark’s. I went there and left when I saw you naked on the ground. I seriously felt so bad for you and I couldn’t do sh*t about it. I’m so sorry.

Jane Doe: WTF? Who was there? Who did that to me?

Ex-boyfriend: The kids who you woke up with and Idk (I don’t know) you’ll have to ask them.

Jane Doe: You couldn’t have told them to stop or anything?

Ex-boyfriend: You don’t think I did? I flipped out on them and they just said they were going to put you to bed and I don’t know what happened after that.

Jane Doe: Thanks. I hate my life. I don’t even know wtf happened.

The following texts took place after the victim discovered there was a photograph of her with semen on her stomach being passed around:

Jane Doe: OMG please tell me this isn’t f***ing true.

Ex-boyfriend: WTF let me find out.

Jane Doe: OMG

Ex-boyfriend: You ok?

Jane Doe: Not at all

Ex-boyfriend: You’ll be all right but I mean did you do anything at all with them? If you remember anything at all you have to tell me. I promise I won’t be mad.

Jane Doe: Swear to God I don’t remember doing anything with them because I didn’t feel good after throwing up. I passed out. I remember Trent telling me to do something but I said no.

Ex-boyfriend: If there’s [semen] on you that’s fucking crazy.

Jane Doe: Please find out.

The Jane Doe in this case also had a text exchange with Trent Mays, who has been accused of rape, in which she told asked him “How could you let this happen to me?”

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  • Pekoe

    I really need to vent my feelings about this after seeing the hate and vile outpourings over on another site. Here’s a little run down of why (assuming that the boys are guilty of rape) THIS IS IN NO WAY JANE DOE’S FAULT:

    1. They were *all* drunk – why aren’t the boys being treated as victims?
    **BECAUSE they’re not victims. She was ‘so drunk’ she has almost entire memory loss. They were ‘so drunk’ they were able to make videos and live-tweet the alleged assaults the entire night.

    2. If she’d got in a car and driven and hurt someone, she wouldn’t have been able to use ‘drunkenness’ as a defence – why is all the pity for her and none for the boys (see pt 1)?
    **Yep, this is true. This is because she would have made a decision that could HURT SOMEONE ELSE. So, by your own logic, even if you consider that these boys were too drunk to act sensibly – they still deserve to be punished as their actions were an illegal act of violence.

    3. She shouldn’t have been drunk /at a party – this is her fault
    **Nope. No no no. EVEN if she was drunk this gives no one the right to attack her. And as for SHE shouldn’t have been at the party – why was it ok for the boys? Why is she being demonised for going to a party comprised of people she knew? I refuse to accept that she was ‘grossly irresponsible’ going to a fucking party with her friends, with people she knew from school.

    4. Oh but she gave one of the boys a handjob!! This implies consent!!
    **Let me ask you something dickwad. If you perform oral sex on your girlfriend, does this give her the right to stick a dildo up your ass without her asking first? No? Didn’t think so. Now concentrate really hard and apply this logic to your above statement. Try and remember that GIVING and TAKING are opposite actions.

    5. Women have the burden of responsibility to prevent rape by not putting themselves in dangerous positions.
    **OK – let me go break up with my boyfriend and get restraining orders on all the men I know in my life, to deal with the fact that MOST RAPE IS COMMITTED BY SOMEONE THE VICTIM KNOWS. And then I will lock myself in isolation in case a stranger wants to rape me. Your point may be ‘logically’ correct but it is morally bankrupt to use it as an excuse for a rapists’ behaviour. Try following your line of logic to its end and see where you are.

    Oh, and to the asshole who followed pt 5 to the end that even abused people have a responsibility to prevent abuse – you better hope I never find you. You stand in front of a victim of child abuse and tell her it’s her fault that her father is molesting her, you dirty sick piece of trash. I hope you’re infertile and never have to look after a child.

    • Andrea

      You win the internet today. :)

    • Pekoe

      Why thank you :)

    • http://www.xojane.com/author/eve Eve Vawter

      I also agree with this winning thing, we need a tiara for you.

    • Pekoe

      That would be amazing!!

    • alice

      THIS!

    • http://www.facebook.com/paul.white.3532507 Paul White

      I think folks forget that “drunk” isn’t a simple binary yes/no state. The perpetrators *may* have had a couple of drinks but they were nowhere near passed out drunk which means they were far and away more aware and alert…which means they were in a position to take advantage of someone…and they did, horribly. And they need to be punished for it, drastically.

    • http://www.facebook.com/valerisexton.jones Valeri Jones

      I completely agree. You totally win the Nobel Prize of Blog Commenting. Thank you.

    • Blueathena623

      Regarding points 3 and 5, are there any other crimes where we place so much blame on the victim? I’ve been making a list in my head and can’t come up with any. I know its simplistic and the analogy has been done to death, but I could leave my front door unlocked, wide open, with huge flashing neon signs that say “no one is home and I have a huge flat screen TV”, and everyone would still agree that anyone who came to rob me would be in the wrong.

    • Imalia

      Well, except your home contents insurers. :-p

    • Makabit

      Someone’s trying to present the boys as victims here? Oh, boy.

      The argument about ‘both people are drunk and unable to give consent, aren’t they both victims’ may hold some water in a situation involving two people, where explicit nonconsent was not given…maybe.

      In this situation, trying to present the boys as victims is insane. They were acting in concert, aware that she was unconscious and unable to consent. They were clearly in control of their actions, and aware of them the next day. This is NOT a couple of drunk teenagers making out at a party and going further than one or both of them would have under the influence. There’s a very clear victim, and perpetrators, here.

      In the case I referred to in my other comment, the police were finally told there was a rape and battery in progress because word spread to parties in the area, and a woman finally picked up the phone and dialed 911. If just one of the people who came into contact with this situation that night had done just that…I’d feel a whole lot less bleak about humanity in general. I know the kids must have feared what would happen if they got adults involved, but shit…if your ex-girlfriend, who you obviously still care about, is being assaulted like this…if that’s not enough to get you to pick up the phone…

    • Pekoe

      I would direct you all to CNN’s coverage of the trial. The Rape Crew Fanclub is out there in force – and I’m not talking trolls, I’m talking people who genuinely believe this is all Jane Doe’s fault. That it wasn’t rape, or that she gangbanged them and was too embarassed to admit to it, or she just made the whole thing up like the Duke case (disclaimer – I’m not familiar with the Duke Lacrosse case).

      Reading through the commens on that page made me feel sick and ashamed to be human.

    • http://twitter.com/StormCat9 StormCat

      I’ve noticed a surprisingly large number of women doing the “blame the victim” thing. The only reason I can think of is because it’s too scary to think something like this could happen to them. If they blame her, they can justify in their minds that she caused it, so by distancing themselves from her and her actions, they feel safe. In their minds, it only happens to girls “like her.” Not realizing that this teen is no different than 95% of teens out there, me included (25 years ago), who as one point or another drank alcohol and put their trust in their friends to make sure they were safe. They refuse to admit Jane did nothing to bring this on herself. People can get drunk and pass out, and if there isn’t a rapist around, they won’t get raped. The rapist is the only cause here. Not her actions. BTW, many, many rapes happen to sober women, too. Women who wear burqas get raped. Nuns get raped. Once again, the only constant variable is the presence of a rapist.

  • Fabel

    These kids better get convicted, is all I can say. They raped a girl while she was passed out & then fucking LAUGHED about how they were going to get away with it. Inhuman.

  • Sara

    “Yes, one can argue that it was her fault for lying to her parent’s about where she would be that night, that she should have known better than to get drunk, that she was “asking for trouble” by going to a party instead of spending the night with her friend, which is what she told her parents she would be doing.”
    No, sorry, but one cannot argue that it was her fault for any reason. I’ve read enough of your columns, Eve, to know that this is probably not what you meant, but there is NO reasonable argument that could be made that the victim has any culpability here. Yes, she made a poor choice, but her poor choice in no way, shape or form shifts any of the blame from the perpetrators of this crime.
    Having said that, I really can’t see how the result of this trial can be anything other than conviction.

    • http://www.xojane.com/author/eve Eve Vawter

      I tried super hard to be clear on my opinion here: That doesn’t excuse rape. No matter how drunk the victim was, she should never have been violated this way, not only in the physical sense, but on social media.

    • Sara

      No, you were pretty clear. I had a feeling that wasn’t what you meant,
      and I don’t think that you were saying that anyone could REASONABLY
      argue that the victim had any culpability here.

    • http://www.xojane.com/author/eve Eve Vawter

      I think because I am being attacked by raging asshates and victim blamers and rape apologists.

  • http://www.whatwouldshethink.com/ Rachelle

    I can’t help but wonder how the boys’ parents are feeling about all of this. Especially Trent’s. I think as a new parent, one of my biggest… concerns, for lack of a better word, is how to set up a strong foundation to help my child mostly make the right decisions (cause she will f**k up, we all do) and know when a line is drawn between acceptable, pardonable and completely unacceptable behaviours. What in those boys’ right minds made them think that what they were doing was acceptable? Where did their sense of morality go? What happened for them to lose that sense of right and wrong? Too much “athlete star power”? Not enough discipline? My husband played basketball during his high school years, and he always says how his coach was like a second father, always drilling home the importance of bringing pride to the team, being gentlemen, and not privileged f*&?wads just because they could dunk.

    Where do we as parents go wrong when our kids cross the line between normal teenage messups and morally damaging behaviour?

    • chickadee

      Embarrassed and horrified would be a good start.

    • whiteroses

      I gave birth to a son 8 months ago. And if athletic ability is genetic at all, he gets it from both sides of his family. So I’ve been thinking a lot about this as well. What I’ve come up with is that as a parent, you want to believe the best of your child. But your (our) first and foremost job is to instill our children with a moral code that includes compassion and responsibility. Based on Richmond’s parents’ reactions (which have been reported here), I’m not sure that a moral code was ever instilled in him, so we can’t really ask where his parents went wrong. I honestly don’t believe that they ever “went” in the first place. Michael Nodianos is an odious human being. I have no idea about Trent Mays- I haven’t read up enough about him. But based on his actions… In a sense, these kids are very much products of their culture. The adults in these boys lives’ failed them at every turn and every point where it mattered. And they’ll have to live with the fact that they destroyed someone’s life, however indirectly. I blame the parents, I blame the culture these boys grew up in that let them get away with anything, but I blame the boys most of all.
      Yeah, I’ll agree that some people are just born psychopaths and they’re raised in perfectly normal families. But everything I’ve read and/or studied about this case makes me genuinely horrified for the world my son will grow up in and the people that he’ll meet, and the fact that their parents will excuse them and cover up for them. The only thing I can do is instill a bone-deep sense in him that if he EVER sees something like this, his first responsibility isn’t to cover his own butt. I’ve had sexual violence perpetrated against me, and I sincerely hope that knowing my story (which he will learn when he’s old enough) will be enough to make my son stop and think when it comes to how he reacts to women. I hope that if he’s ever in this situation, he’ll be the one person who speaks out.

      Basically, you do your damndest. You care about your kids. You help them in some cases and let them fail in others. And you pray to God that it’s enough. The good thing is that most of the time, for a lot of people, it is.

    • Peggy

      I have been thinking a lot of these same things lately. I have twin 3 year old boys, and while I always thought the whole “birds and bees” talk would be a boys thing, I’m seeing more and more how important *I* am going to be in that conversation. How important both of us (mother and father) are going to be in that conversation, and the subsequent conversations about how, no matter what, no means no. I cannot imagine being the mother of one of those boys, and how I would react/feel. It makes me sick to think of someones children doing those things to another child. Just sick.

      “Basically, you do your damndest. You care about your kids. You help them
      in some cases and let them fail in others. And you pray to God that
      it’s enough.”-I cannot agree with this statement enough.

    • whiteroses

      I can’t help but wonder, too- at some point, these boys were just like my son. A blank slate who could do or be anything. Jackie Kennedy once said that if you bungle raising your children, whatever else you do won’t matter much. I agree with that completely. It seems like everyone defending this is just sticking their heads in the sand and praying it will go away. It’s not going to. And it shouldn’t. I think that the fact that we’re worried about how to raise our children correctly says a lot for us.

    • Peggy

      Well said.

  • chickadee

    So I understand that the first party took place in the coach’s house, so how is he not at least responsible for hosting an underaged drinking party? Why has he not denounced what happened in some way? How does he still have a job?

    • alice

      all great, and infuriating, questions

    • chickadee

      I went to junior high and high school in Texas so I am well acquainted with All Hail Football, but I have never seen behavior this egregious. These kids’ attitudes seem to be that they can get away with anything because the football halo protects them. There was an article talking about how powerful people begin to think they are above rules (this came out after Weiner tweeted his wiener photos) and it’s frightening to realize that in certain communities, football programs project that sort of power mystique. I hope this trial starts a larger conversation about the blind veneration our culture has for football players. Otherwise these kids will just be junior Ben Roethlisbergers…..

    • http://www.xojane.com/author/eve Eve Vawter

      It was the assistant coach and he claims he wasn’t at home at the time but when he arrived home he kicked the underage drunk teens out of his house so they could get in their car <3

    • chickadee

      Sooooooo, yeah. Mr. Responsible Awesome Role Model! We could have a long and indignant chat about how many things are wrong there, but I think I will just resort to smh because there are just not enough words.

    • K.

      Annnnd THIS + Eve’s clarification + a zillion other stories to come out is why I am tapped out of my sympathy for the whole “Don’t crucify our whole community!!” battle cry of Steubenville.

      A ‘community’ is made up of people. This includes adults who, if asked if they’d like to pay $3 to pee on an intoxicated teenager would not just laugh and say, “No thanks”–they would call the police. That’s one’s job as a member of a ‘community.’ Or tell a kid who confesses that they may have raped someone last night, “Gee, son, we’re going to have to inform the authorities on this one. Sorry.” That’s one’s job as a member of a ‘community’–especially a coach or teacher.

      And I’m sorry–the assistant coach’s student-athletes felt totally fine waltzing in and taking over his house for the night, and we question why these kids (not just the accused, but all the kids who participating in the texting etc.) lack boundaries??

      Yeah, fine, Steubenville. Defend your community of fucktards. I’m done.

    • whiteroses

      Yes. This. As a teacher, my responsibility was to ALL my students- not just the ones who may or may not have been athletically gifted. I can’t believe this man isn’t out of a job. At the very least, he should have stepped in as an adult and a putative authority figure. Or, you know, not served alcohol.

  • Phalanx928

    If the coach had any involvement in covering this up, obstructing justice, tampering with evidence, etc, he needs to go to prison and that football program needs to be shut down.

    Period.

    Parents, school boards, athletic directors, etc, of any and all surrounding schools need to boycott their football teams from playing Steubenville. Let them field their precious team, and make it so toxic that NO ONE will play them.

    That will be justice.

    • whiteroses

      Another form of justice would be to ask every single adult in that town why on God’s green earth they allowed their town to be run by a bunch of high schoolers.

      I used to have compassion for some of the adults in this town. Not anymore. As far as I’m concerned, every adult except the girls parents has something to answer to. And the scary part is that if there wasn’t universal outrage about this from all the sane people on the Internet, it would be business as usual in Steubenville and nobody would care. That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me up a night- how many rapes go unreported because the victims think a) nobody will care, and b) they’ll be shamed. I hope this girl knows that we care. And I hope that she knows that no matter what some people may say, she has nothing to be ashamed of. If she does take the stand, she’s extremely brave.

    • http://twitter.com/StormCat9 StormCat

      “Another form of justice would be to ask every single adult in that town why on God’s green earth they allowed their town to be run by a bunch of high schoolers.”

      Amen!!! They look ridiculous going through all this trouble to protect a bunch of kids whose best quality is that they can throw and/or catch a ball.

  • Annie

    . . . PRISON FOR EVERYONE. FUCK.

  • Makabit

    There was a gang-rape outside a high school dance in my area a couple of years ago. I was teaching at a different high school at the time, and the victim-blaming I heard out of some of my students was frightening. We need to teach our kids better and different.

  • Emily

    The more and more I read about this case the more heartbreaking it becomes… this poor girl. I am so appalled that these kids are thinking that they are going to get off so easily…

    • whiteroses

      Why wouldn’t they? They’ve gotten away with everything else they’ve ever done because they can throw a ball.
      This is why it’s so important to make our kids face the consequences of their actions.

  • Bria

    I live in Ohio and to be honest the news coverage here has been horrid. A lot of it is focusing on the “lost career of a potential college football star”. It seems like every detail that comes out about this case is 5 times worse than the last. It’s really making my soul die.

  • Gangle

    I just don’t have words. Really. What is wrong with this town? How can anyone do this… who could defend the rape of a girl.. This town allowed one of thier daughters to be raped and abused and humiliated by one of its sons.. don’t know. This makes me sad. I hope there is justice. I hope that this town burns to the ground. It is a broken, sick place.

  • Madame Ovaries

    Rape and assault are crimes. Lying to your parents and hanging out with the wrong guys are not, period. I hate that people are acting like her mistakes are the same as the boys’ (alleged) crimes.

  • jessica

    I didn’t know about the semen part. Oh lord, just when I thought this whole thing couldn’t get any sicker… it did. I think I may have to take a break from the trial coverage for a little while. I’ll re-emerge when it’s time for the sentencing hearing.

  • Disgusted

    I would cut my son’s dick off and feed it to him for raping a helpless unconscious girl. Anyone on here who thinks that these boys need defending, as if it was impossible for them not to but their bodies onto anything even slightly female shaped is a horrible person and I hope none of you are parents. We don’t need boys like this. Their behavior is disgusting and defending it just shows how sad our society has gotten. Don’t want to be convicted of rape? Don’t stick your dick into unconscious people. If you can’t make it through life with such simple rules, you belong behind bars.

  • Amber

    This is in no way the girl’s fault. Sexual assault is not an acceptable punishment for underage drinking and lying to your parents in our society. It doesn’t matter what she did “wrong”, having sex with a person who can’t consent is never acceptable.

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