This story is awful, and the NYTimes coverage is fucking garbage. What the fuck does it matter if she wears makeup? Does that make it ok to rape her? Who knows where her mother is? Maybe she was looking for her desperately, maybe she was strung out on crack. Does that make it ok for a group of men to gang rape an eleven year old? Why even fucking say that shit? The whole thing was, “Oh these poor boys, their lives will be ruined!”
So sick.
Sadly the Supreme Court has decided we can’t even lethally inject any of this sickos. If ever there was a justification for capital rape laws.
Absolutely. You’ve pointed out the worst of it, obviously, but the story is just littered with ridiculous language more befitting a TV script a la Criminal Minds than a piece of journalism.
Also, the whole deal about the make up and dressing older than her age makes it seem like it would be okay to hold an adult woman against her will and gang rape her. The story is, of course, more horrific because this is a middle school student we’re talking about, but nothing makes it better or okay.
I thought the part about the makeup and clothes was to point out the lack of parental care in this girl’s life.
Maybe it was, but it doesn’t fucking matter. She is the victim. I want to know where the mothers of sick fucking scum who raped her are. That’s is a pertinent fucking question. The lack of parental care in the victim’s life is neither here nor there. What is the point?
I would bet that in more than one or two cases, the mothers of the accused are busy getting 2nd mortgages or other loans taken out on their homes so they can use the money to bail their (allegedly) child raping teen-aged sons out of jail.
Dosen’t make it right, but many parents stick by their kids, no matter how fucked-up the situation.
Finally, in my first post, I was most certainly NOT trying to advocate for a token, slap-on-the-wrist punishment for the teen attackers. I was pointing out that when it comes to kiddie porn, the justice system does not play around, at least around here. These teens have gotten themselves into a situation that will affect the rest of their lives, and of course God only knows how the 11 year-old victim will ever heal.
if it were my son, he could do the fucking time. not that it would be my son but you get my meaning. Freaken scumbags should be locked up for years.
Dio, I love men, and I think they are our friends, partners and allies. But I kind of agree with you. It is sickening, heartbreaking, terrifying and stunning the sheer percentage of men who will, with the tiniest gap in social controls. rape women.
Think about marauding soldiers taking a town. They rape. They rape in massive numbers. These are not evil people. They are ordinary soldiers, maybe even our own relatives. But when they have the opportunity to rape, they in overwhelming numbers rape.
I’ve been in places where men have access to underage girls- and I’m not talking 17 year olds. In large numbers, they are perfectly willing to try it. If an 11 year old prostitute shows up at your room, a lot of men will go through with it.
The one time I was subject to a rape attempt, it was purely opportunity. I was physically hurt in an isolated place with no way to help myself. Someone came along and saw that as the chance to do something that perhaps he always wanted to do- or perhaps something he never considered but suddenly decided to do. I was able to talk him out of it pretty easily. He ended up helping me get help. I don’t think he was evil or even extraordinary. He just saw a chance.
I’m not sure how to process this thought. How do you reconcile the fact that most ordinary men (maybe ordinary people) will not only support but perpetuate great evil if they feel they can get away with it.
**Most **men are wannabe rapists? Bullshit.
A lack of parental care may go far beyond simple negligence (which is pretty bad when it comes to children anyway). This could go as far as complicity in the crime. The point of the news coverage should be to report the whole story (and I’m not defending the coverage here, it does suck), and any information about the circumstances is relevant. Even if you don’t like the news story, it is no more responsible for the crime than the girl is. You probably won’t hear much about the mothers of the rapists. Their children are all good boys who were pressured into commiting a horrific act by those other mother’s bad kids.
This story certainly makes me shudder. To amplify that comment might just seem like trite opportunism.
But I hope I’m not accused of condoning such rape by objecting to this:
I’ll agree the story raises interesting questions about Cleveland’s citizens (one is quoted saying “I really wish that this could end in a better light.”) However I strongly disagree with miss elizabeth’s take. I want my journalists to tell as complete a story as they can, not to choose selectively which facts best fit a “correct” perspective and which don’t. For example, knowing the races of individuals in the story might add insight, but I don’t think reporters are allowed to reveal that.
(I score as Briggs-Meyer INTP-Perceptive while many Dopers are INTJ-Judgmental. That difference shows up over and over in some of these threads.)
There is a petition going to get the NYTimes to print an apology for the victim-blaming rhetoric that the story is littered with. Putting any focus on what the victim of a sex crime is wearing or doing is bad enough, but when it’s a child, and a gang rape, it’s just beyond the pale. Journalistic integrity went right out the window on this story.
No, it’s just responsible for reinforcing and propping up the rape culture in which we live.
God, what an awful tragedy =(
I too think it’s important to know all of the facts and the backgrounds of the players in this terrible tragedy. It is not condoning the actions of the men and boys who violated the little girl to understand that she may have been at the time a willing participant in the activity. If anything that makes it sadder, that a young girl was familiar with the rites of sexual activity, and agreed to be used in such a dehumanising way, speaks volumes for the family background, the community and the society in which she lives.
Now if I need to make it clearer, again, the animals who abused this little girl need to go away for a long, long time. They need to be shown the error of their ways, forcibly if necessary. But it is also incumbent upon the ‘victims’ (the girl, her family and her community) to look within themselves as to how to prevent this sort of shit happening in the future.
This was not a child snatched from a bedroom and taken away to be gang-raped by strangers: this was a child who engaged with her abusers voluntarily, and suffered the worst possible consequences. And at some point, she and her family are going to have to face some pretty challenging issues…I hope sooner rather than later.
Most people, in very standard situations (a bit of mob mentality, for example) are at risk of making the bad choice. Even for normal people, evil may be a step away. We’ve seen this time after time. Remember in Rwanda how ordinary people, egged on by something as slight as radio broadcasts, quickly turned to their neighbors and systematically slaughtered them.
Being a good person means nothing. Good is a choice we have to make, every single day without cease.
I agree that it’s important to know all the facts in the case. Here are some facts:
The men started out by threatening the little girl with a beating if she didn’t take off her clothes.
They also threatened to beat her if she didn’t comply with their sexual requests.
Wearing makeup and grown up clothes does not imply automatic consent for sex with twenty partners.
She was in middle school. She still liked stuffed animals.
Backpeddling much?
Being good is not an active struggle. In most situations I don’t even think about doing the “wrong” thing. It isn’t a consideration or a factor. In fact I’d argue that it’s more the other way around. It’s far easier to do the right thing, or nothing, than to willingly choose to engage in bad behaviour. If someone’s default setting is on “evil” and they have to remind themselves to be good at all times, there is something wrong with them.
I am unaware of any legal restriction concerning the identification of the race of the accused in a story about crime (or anything else). There may be ethical concerns that I can see, like only mentioning it if it is germane to the crime somehow, but it’s not like identifying rape victims where there are legal restrictions (in some states) that forbid it.
For the story in the NYT I can see the reporters problem straightaway. He’s got a horrific crime and little to no facts. The only ones who are talking who know anything are the people related in some way to the accused. It’s clear from the reporting that he had little info from the police and NO access to the victim or her family. Therefore the story that comes out is going to have things about the victim that are unflattering because that’s a basic way people gossip.
I am not at all concerned that the teens will be permanently affected. They actively did something that was horrendously harmful. If they knew it was wrong, and did it anyway, then they need to be locked up forever. If they DIDN’T know it was wrong, then they should be locked up forever, because they are broken.
Since the accused like to do things together, if they are convicted I’d be in favor of them all sharing a mass, anonymous grave.