What we’re learning from the Steubenville rape trial.
We’re learning that there were text messages. Lots of text messages.
A state forensics investigator, Joann Gibb, methodically quoted from text messages that she said came from the phone of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, 17, and from the phones of friends and classmates. The messages described the inebriated girl as “dead” or as a “dead body” and stated that Mr. Mays acknowledged penetrating the girl with his fingers.
Because that’s what you do. If there’s a girl at a party who passes out from drinking too much, you stick your fingers up her.
The texts read from the witness stand by Ms. Gibb suggested that Mr. Mays and his friends grew concerned about how many pictures were being shared on social media, how the episode would affect his role on the football team, what the reaction would be from the girl’s father and, ultimately, that if charges were ever pressed, whether the authorities would examine Mr. Mays’s cellphone messages.
One text sent from Mr. Mays’s phone to an acquaintance stated that “if they press charges, they are going to look at all my texts,” according to the testimony of Ms. Gibb.
“Delete them,” the acquaintance responded.
Interesting what they grew concerned about. Not the possibility that they’d done a shitty thing to the girl, and a whole series of new shitty things by texting about it; not the possibility that the girl had been harmed; but the possibility that their doing a shitty thing and then bragging about it might turn out to be detrimental to them.
They sound like really great kids. I hope their football team is proud.
On the witness stand, Ms. Gibb also described text messages suggesting that the 16-year-old girl did not know what had happened to her that night, and that she grew angry and vulnerable as she learned more.
“I wasn’t being a slut. They were taking advantage of me,” stated one text message sent from the girl’s phone, according to Ms. Gibb’s testimony.
To a friend of Mr. Mays, the girl wrote in another text message: “Who was there who did that to me?” She added, “You couldn’t have told them to stop or anything?”
“I hate my life,” the girl also texted, stating at another point: “Oh my God, please tell me this isn’t” true.
Yes but she’s not on the football team, so who cares about her.