Guilty on all counts.
Two players from a storied Ohio high school football team raped a vulnerable, drunken 16-year-old girl during a series of alcohol-laced parties last August, an Ohio judge ruled Sunday.
Stunned by the verdict, Ma’lik Richmond, 16, and quarterback Trent Mays, 17, broke down weeping uncontrollably in the Steubenville courtroom. But the case is not over yet.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the court will convene a grand jury next month — an investigative tool sometimes used by the state to compel 16 people who refused to co-operate with police to testify about what happened in the one-time steel town that night.
More indictments could come.
DeWine also appealed to everyone in America to realize that rape is not a problem confined to Steubenville, but “a nationwide problem.”
“What happened here is shocking and appalling. But frankly, what is even more shocking and appalling is that crimes of sexual assault are occurring every Friday night and every Saturday night across this country, in big and small communities,” DeWine said at a news conference.
“We should not tolerate it anymore — as a people and as a country.”
National studies show that one in every five American women experiences rape or attempted rape in her lifetime — and that one in five girls and women who attend college experiences the same thing during their years of study. The trial drew national and international attention because of its sensational story of teens, booze, sport and sexual assault in small-town America.
But DeWine said there will be no closure for the town until he is certain that “no stone has been left unturned in our search for the truth.” The guilty boys apologized both to the victim and her parents Sunday.
This was an example of how "big" athletics has become in acadamia. I am speculating ONLY, that the coach was aware of it and tried to cover it up, "his boys"were just being "boys." Football rules in Steubenville, players can do no wrong. Here, they did, and thankfully, they are going to have to pay for what they did. It would be "fitting" to remove football from the school program. Common decency should be uppermost in the school curriculum and the football coach should nor "rule the roost." I am sure this scenario has happened in the past. I wonder what the football coach there made in comparison to the principal? At OSU, the coach makes more than the president of the university ..... what does that say? Would it not be ironic if they both, while in prison, were held down and raped by some big inmate and his friends ........
