Steubenville: Two teenage football players have gone to trial on charges of raping a 16-year-old girl, in a case that divided a small US town after activists publicised tweets and a video posted the night of the alleged attack.
The rape case has deeply shaken the Ohio community amid allegations that more students should have been charged. It also has led to questions about the influence of the local football team, a source of a pride in a community that suffered massive job losses with the collapse of the regional steel industry.
The trial's first day on Wednesday became a contest between prosecutors determined to show the girl was so drunk she couldn't have been a willing participant and defence attorneys trying to show that the girl, though drunk, knew what she was doing. The girl says she was raped by two school football players after an alcohol-fuelled party. She was "substantially impaired" and was unable to consent to sex and suffered humiliation and degradation, Special Prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter said in her opening statement.
But a lawyer for defendant Trent Mays said his 17-year-old client "did not rape the young lady in question." The attorney for Mays' co-defendant, for Ma'Lik Richmond, 16, gave no opening statement. Richmond and Mays are charged with digitally assaulting the girl, first in the back seat of a moving car after the party August 11 and then in the basement of a house. Mays also is charged with illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material.
The two were charged 10 days after the party, after a flurry of social media postings about the alleged attack led the girl and her family to go to Steubenville police. Hacker activists have publicised tweets and other social media postings made the night of the alleged rape, including a 12-minute video in which one student joked about the alleged attack while others in the background chimed in.
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