Post date: Mar 17, 2013 6:20:50 PM
Two former star high school football players break down in tears in court after judge finds them guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl during a night of partying last August. The case received national attention through social media exposure.
STEUBENVILLE, OHIO, UNITED STATES (MARCH 17, 2013) (NBC) - Two high school football players from Ohio were found guilty on Sunday (March 17) of raping a 16-year-old girl at a party last summer while she was in a drunken stupor in a case that gained national exposure through social media.
Ohio authorities also promised on Sunday to continue the investigation to determine if other crimes had been committed.Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'lik Richmond, 16, two members of Steubenville's "Big Red" football team, were found delinquent in the sexual assault of the girl in the early morning of August 12 when witnesses said she was too drunk to move or speak.
Judge Tom Lipps ordered Richmond held in a juvenile detention facility for at least one year and Mays at least two years.
The juvenile system could hold them until age 21. Both were required to register as juvenile sex offenders.
The defendants could be heard sobbing after Lipps announced the decision in the non-jury, juvenile court case. Mays and Richmond had denied the charge and said any sex that occurred was consensual.
Mays and Richmond apologized after Lipps found them delinquent of all charges against them.
"I would like to apologize to you people. I had no intentions to do anything like that. I'm sorry to put you guys through this," Richmond told the girl's parents before starting to cry in court.
Mays had been found delinquent of a second charge - taking and sending a picture of the girl to other people. "Those pictures shouldn't have been sent around, let alone even taken, and that's all sir. Thank you," Mays said.
Richmond's attorney, Walter Madison, said they would appeal the decision.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the case could not be brought to a "finality" without a grand jury and he was asking the Jefferson County courts to name one in mid-April to determine if other crimes had been committed at the party.
Investigators interviewed 27 partygoers but 16 others refused to cooperate and numerous witnesses could be called to testify before a grand jury that could meet for a number of days.
Bob Fitzsimmons, an attorney representing the girl, said on Sunday his side still was weighing whether to file a civil lawsuit.
The case drew national attention to the town, 40 miles west of Pittsburgh, after a photo and video from the party that appeared to document the assault were posted online.
The computer hacking group Anonymous publicized the picture of two males carrying the girl by her wrists and ankles and organized protests accusing the town known for its "Big Red" football team of covering up the involvement of more players.
Anonymous also posted a video that showed several other young men joking about an alleged assault.
"It's rape. It is rape. They raped her," says one of the young men on the video. None of the people in the video have been implicated with involvement in the alleged rape.
"They raped her harder than that cop raped Marcelus in 'Pulp Fiction," says another. "Dude. He raped her quicker than Mike Tyson raped that one girl."
"What if that was your daughter?" one young man asks the others.
"But it isn't," another man replies. "If that was my daughter. I wouldn't care. I'd let her be dead."
Teammates of Mays and Richmond were granted immunity and testified against them at the trial. DeWine said Sunday the immunity granted to those players under the specific circumstances would carry over to the grand jury.
The non-jury trial neared its conclusion late on Saturday (March 16) after four days of testimony capped by the accuser's tearful acknowledgment on the witness stand that she had little memory from the night of the alleged assaults.
Lipps said the evidence presented was profane and ugly at times and said that alcohol consumption showed a particular danger to teenage youth.
Prosecutors had argued that the things that made her an imperfect witness, her substantial impairment, also made her a perfect victim.
Under its policy of keeping the names of accusers in rape cases confidential, Reuters has not identified the girl.