Grapesoda

thoughts?




How Bad Is 'Viral' Rape Shame? It Pushes Teenage Girls into Killing Themselves

Reuters (Halifax); Audrie Pott Foundation; Angel Rehtaeh Facebook Pa


Alexander Abad-Santos 1:45 PM ET


Seven months after 15-year-old Audrie Pott posted a grim Facebook message and hanged herself near Santa Clara, California, police arrested three 16-year-old boys on sexual battery charges late Thursday, amid allegations that she was "savagely assaulted by her fellow high school students while she lay on a bed completely unconscious" ? only to have cellphone photos of the attack get shared amongst the 1,400 students at Saratoga High School.

If this kind of tragedy sounds familiar, the arrests arrived exactly one week after 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons hanged herself in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where her mother has taken to Facebook ? and Anonymous has taken the Canadian case to the masses ? with a plea for swift justice for the four boys she says raped her daughter, then passed photos of the attack around Cole Harbour High.

Indeed, if the combination of rape, victim-blaming, and a social media tornado from small towns to national outrage seems like something of a trend this year, perhaps a cold new reality has arrived: In the aftermath of a football party rape in Steubenville, Ohio ? the most high-profile underage case, of an average 207,754 sexual assaults reported every year in America, to reveal the horror of high-school rape culture in an age of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook ? it may take these deaths to wake up students, parents, and the rest of social media that something needs to be done. Here's how these three tragedies are intersecting right now:

Audrie Pott

Pott was a sophomore in high school, a musician and soccer player who loved horses. She killed herself on September 10, 2012 ? eight days after she was allegedly sexually assaulted after passing out at party. "Based on what we know, she was unconscious, there were multiple boys in the room with her," the Pott family attorney, Robert Allard, told NBC's Bay Area affiliate Thursday. "They did unimaginable things to her while she was unconscious." At least one of the boys ? two of the suspects were classmates in Saratoga High School, near Santa Clara and San Joe, and a third was a student down the road in Gilroy ? also took at least one "viral" photo of the girl naked and being assaulted, the lawyer said.

That photo apparently made its way around the party by way of text messaging and email and, eventually, to Facebook, where Pott's family says she ended up posting her own message ? "worst day ever" ? before taking her own life.

Her parents did not know about the attack in question until after she died. They are now taking Audrie's story public in their quest to have the three boys tried as adults, and to bring attention to the pressure put on their daughter from the school community. "Teens can say whatever they want on a typed screen," a local teen counselor told NBC, "and then push 'send' without having to think and feel about the ramifications and see the feelings, the results of what that can do to a peer."

Rehtaeh Parsons

Parsons committed suicide last Thursday and died over the weekend, some 18 months after four boys allegedly attacked her at a house party. A single photograph had apparently surfaced from that November 2011 incident as well, and her parents said she was never the same. Her mother, Leah, posted an emotional message on Facebook earlier this week:


...one of those boys took a photo of her being raped and decided it would be fun to distribute the photo to everyone in Rehtaeh?s school and community where it quickly went viral. Because the boys already had a ?slut? story, the victim of the rape Rehtaeh was considered a SLUT. This day changed the lives of our family forever.

Leah described the fallout to a local radio station like this, according to Canada's Global News:

They told the story that Rehtaeh had sex with them all ... So everybody turned against Rehtaeh and she was a ?slut? and she was the one that they targeted.

Leah says that Rehtaeh became depressed after the picture was circulated, that school became difficult, and that ultimately Rehtaeh was driven to suicide by bullying. "People texted her all the time, saying 'Will you have sex with me?' Girls texting, saying 'You're such a slut,'" Leah told The Chronicle Herald. "She acted on an impulse, but I truly, in my heart of heart, do not feel she meant to kill herself," Leah wrote on the Facebook page.

Leah's boyfriend, Jason Barnes, blamed adults as well as the children at the school. "The justice system failed us completely," he told the Star. "The education system didn?t seem to do much of anything." The local school board and government officials said this week that they are considering whether to reopen the case ? not just the attack but the fallout, and how it could have been handled different.

Why Rehtaeh and Audrie's Cases Look Like Steubenville

It's not just because outraged media outlets call Rehtaeh's case "Canada's Steubenville," or just because as word broke out of Santa Clara Thursday night, many started to say it's "not just Rehtaeh." The primary reason that Steubenville keep returning to the fore is, that the lessons we were supposed to learn from Steubenville haven't been learned ? the Ohio attorney general's office says it's monitoring social media 24 hours a day to prevent more victim shaming after two teens were arrested for threatening the victim's life following the verdict in which two football players were found guilty in juvenile court of raping the 16-year-old from across state lines.

But in all three cases there is photo evidence from drunken teenage parties, of a girl in various states of undress ? photos passed around immediately from suspect to fellow partygoer, from classmate to classmate, from cell phone to text message to email, and eventually to Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. And, often too late, to parents and educators and police.

In Steubenville, photos and videos of Jane Doe ? her family has not gone public with her name, as is customary for victims of sexual assault ? were taken at multiple parties. Many of them were shared among students that night. But most of them, with the exception of one Instagram photo (pictured at left) that went viral and a few more that were presented at the trial, were immediately deleted. One of the convicted rapists, Trent Mays, was convicted of "illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material."

Three boys involved in Pott's attack have been arrested, but the extent of the social media activity ? which is under renewed scrutiny in Canada ? remains unclear as the case in California gets underway. USA Today reports:

continues...
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/natio...parsons/64172/

xolite

Sad tragic story. Personally, i believe they should be tried as adults. What they did is brutal and sadistic . Canada needs tougher penalties for shit like this and so many other things as well. We, in comparison to the US, Are pathetic when it comes to justice. It is sickening for me to watch as Canadian citizen.

PR_Glen

one example of this would be? Please enlighten us.

This wouldn't count being that they weren't convicted at all before this incident.

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_Richard_

joined in 06, 4 posts, hammer them cause that's how i roll

sounds about right

_Richard_

anyway, 'new evidence' came to light after the viral push.. people will be going to jail

Grapesoda

glad I was able to amuse you with the story

_Richard_

Gear down there, Big Rig