Ohio teens guilty of rape, face year-plus in jail

03.17.13 — STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Two mem­bers of the high school foot­ball team that is the pride of Steubenville were found guilty Sun­day of rap­ing a drunken 16-year-old girl in a case that bit­terly divided the Rust Belt city and led to accu­sa­tions of a cover-up to pro­tect the community’s athletes.

Steubenville High School stu­dents Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Rich­mond were sen­tence to at least a year in juve­nile jail, cap­ping a case that came to light via a bar­rage of morning-after text mes­sages, social media posts and online pho­tos and video. Mays was sen­tenced to an addi­tional year in jail on a charge of ille­gal use of a minor in nudity-oriented mate­r­ial, to be served after his rape sen­tence is completed.

The two teens broke down in tears after the ver­dict was read and later apol­o­gized to the vic­tim and to the com­mu­nity. Both were emo­tional as they spoke, and Rich­mond strug­gled at times to talk through his sobs.

Mays, 17, and Rich­mond, 16, were charged with dig­i­tally pen­e­trat­ing the West Vir­ginia girl, first in the back seat of a mov­ing car after an alcohol-fueled party on Aug. 11, and then in the base­ment of a house. They were ordered to avoid con­tact with the vic­tim until they’re 21.

The case roiled the com­mu­nity amid alle­ga­tions that more stu­dents should have been charged and led to ques­tions about the influ­ence of the local foot­ball team, a source of a pride in a com­mu­nity of 18,000 that suf­fered mas­sive job losses with the col­lapse of the steel indus­try. Their arms linked, pro­test­ers stood out­side the cour­t­house Sun­day morn­ing await­ing the ver­dict, some wear­ing masks.

The trial opened last week as a con­test between pros­e­cu­tors deter­mined to show the girl was so drunk she couldn’t have been a will­ing par­tic­i­pant that night, and defense attor­neys solic­it­ing tes­ti­mony from wit­nesses that would indi­cate that the girl, though drunk, knew what she was doing.

The teenage girl tes­ti­fied Sat­ur­day that she could not recall what hap­pened the night of the attack but remem­bered wak­ing up naked in a strange house after drink­ing at a party. The girl said she recalled drink­ing, leav­ing the party hold­ing hands with Mays and throw­ing up later. When she woke up, she said she dis­cov­ered her phone, ear­rings, shoes, and under­wear were miss­ing, she testified.

“It was really scary,” she said. “I hon­estly did not know what to think because I could not remem­ber anything.”

The girl said she believed she was assaulted when she later read text mes­sages among friends and saw a photo of her­self taken that night, along with a video that made fun of her and the alleged attack. She said she sus­pected she had been drugged because she couldn’t explain being as intox­i­cated as defense wit­nesses have said she was.

“They treated her like a toy,” said spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Mar­i­anne Hemmeter.

Evi­dence intro­duced at the trial included graphic text mes­sages sent by numer­ous stu­dents after the night of the party, includ­ing by the accuser, con­tain­ing provoca­tive descrip­tions of sex acts and obscene lan­guage. Lawyers noted dur­ing the trial how texts have seemed to replace talk­ing on the phone for con­tem­po­rary teens. A com­puter foren­sic expert called by the state doc­u­mented tens of thou­sands of texts found on 17 phones seized dur­ing the investigation.

The girl her­self recalled being in a car later with Mays and Rich­mond and ask­ing them what happened.

“They kept telling me I was a has­sle and they took care of me,” she tes­ti­fied. “I thought I could trust him (Mays) until I saw the pic­tures and video.”

In ques­tion­ing her account, defense attor­neys went after her char­ac­ter and cred­i­bil­ity. Two for­mer friends of the girl tes­ti­fied that the accuser had a his­tory of drink­ing heav­ily and was known to lie.

“The real­ity is, she drank, she has a rep­u­ta­tion for telling lies,” said lawyer Wal­ter Madi­son, rep­re­sent­ing Richmond.

The two girls tes­ti­fied they were angry at the accuser because she was drink­ing heav­ily at the party and rolling around on the floor. They said they tried unsuc­cess­fully to get her to stop drinking.

The accuser said that she does not remem­ber being pho­tographed as she was car­ried by Mays and Rich­mond, an image that stirred up out­rage, first locally, then glob­ally, as it spread online. Oth­ers have tes­ti­fied the photo was a joke and the girl was con­scious when it was taken.

The pho­to­graph led to alle­ga­tions that three other boys, two of them mem­bers of Steubenville High’s cel­e­brated Big Red team, saw some­thing hap­pen­ing that night and didn’t try to stop it but instead recorded it.

The three boys weren’t charged, fuel­ing months of online accu­sa­tions of a cover-up to pro­tect the team, which law enforce­ment author­i­ties have vehe­mently denied.

Instead, the teens were granted immu­nity to tes­tify, and their accounts helped incrim­i­nate the defen­dants. They said the girl was so drunk she didn’t seem to know what was hap­pen­ing to her and con­firmed she was dig­i­tally pen­e­trated in a car and later on a base­ment floor.

Ohio’s attor­ney gen­eral planned to announce later Sun­day whether addi­tional charges will be brought against oth­ers in the case.

Mays and Rich­mond were deter­mined to be delin­quent, the juve­nile equiv­a­lent of guilty, Judge Thomas Lipps ruled in the juve­nile court trial with­out a jury.

They can be held until they’re 21, and the length of their sen­tence beyond the min­i­mum one year will be deter­mined by juve­nile authorities.

The Asso­ci­ated Press nor­mally doesn’t iden­tify minors charged in juve­nile court, but Mays and Rich­mond have been widely iden­ti­fied in news cov­er­age, and their names have been used in open court. The AP also does not gen­er­ally iden­tify peo­ple who say they were vic­tims of sex crimes.