18 Mar 2013

Social media bring US rape case to national attention

9:15 pm on 18 March 2013

In a case that has drawn nationwide attention in the US, because it came to light through social media, two high-school football players have been found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl.

Trent Mays, 16, and Ma'lik Richmond, 17, attacked the girl after a drunken party in the town of Steubenville, Ohio.

Both were sentenced to at least a year in juvenile detention and Mays was sentenced to another year for taking pictures of the naked victim. The judge said both might stay in detention until they reach 21.

Both wept as the verdict was read out.

The BBC reports the case came to light via text messages, online videos and social media posts made the morning after the attack.

Online activists claimed that the Steubenville community - including local police - had sought to cover up the crime to protect the accused.

Photos posted on internet

Last August, Mays and Richmond left a party with the girl and sexually abused her, first in a car and then at a friend's house.

She was so drunk she has no memory of the attack, but prosecutors said she had been "treated like a toy".

There was no physical evidence, but details of the evening emerged from text messages, tweets and humiliating photos posted on the internet by the attackers and other partygoers.

The case caused a bitter divide in Steubenville, a small and economically depressed former steel town that has immense pride in its high-school football team, known as the "Big Red".