football championship > rape victim

Jeanwah wrote:

Eh, ya know, they probably are "OK" kids with good grades, whatever. But there's something that goes along with being the star of the highly-worshipped high school football team that makes one think that they're unstoppable, entitled and treated better than most of his classmates. That sort of treatment leads one to believe that they can do no wrong, so, they test boundaries. Sometimes they succeed with getting away with them, and sometimes they're caught. Theses guys pushed the limit too far, and got caught.

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Still... at some point you think that they would HAVE to feel empathy for the person they were doing this to, having their core moral beliefs kick in and say to themselves, 'This is wrong'.
The thing is... they are learning at a young age that they should not have believed in all of the hype about them.
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Also, the bystanders are going to be facing a Grand Jury for their role in this. The role in which they preteneded it was okay.

i had a feeling that would be the response ...

soo - is the lesson then to continue to get inebriated to the point of being unconscious and that's ok!?? ... is that what you would have learned here? ... again - i'm not condoning the actions or saying they were justified ... but if you don't understand that she played a part in this to her own detriment then we are missing the truth of it ...

also again ... if you do anything while you are inebriated - most people would put the blame on you ... if you go tell you friends you got blasted and passed out on the street and someone stole your wallet ... you think people are gonna say - awwwww, that's totally not your fault man? ... c'mon ...

polaris_x wrote:

i had a feeling that would be the response ...

soo - is the lesson then to continue to get inebriated to the point of being unconscious and that's ok!?? ... is that what you would have learned here? ... again - i'm not condoning the actions or saying they were justified ... but if you don't understand that she played a part in this to her own detriment then we are missing the truth of it ...

also again ... if you do anything while you are inebriated - most people would put the blame on you ... if you go tell you friends you got blasted and passed out on the street and someone stole your wallet ... you think people are gonna say - awwwww, that's totally not your fault man? ... c'mon ...

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I totally get where you are coming from. But, as humans, we are not supposed to be predatory animals who prey on the weak... or the incapacitated. We are supposed to care for them.
Yeah, if she got really drunk... and one loser criminal guy rapes her. It is still on the guy because you cannot rape (or steal someone's wallet), regardless of the state they are in.
The greater picture here is that there were other people involved. I would hope that i would have the courage to stop a friend from commiting a crime... but, i KNOW I would not participate in said crime, mostly on moral grounds... but, also the fact that I am way too pretty and have too nice of an ass to be in prison.

Cosmo wrote:

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I totally get where you are coming from. But, as humans, we are not supposed to be predatory animals who prey on the weak... or the incapacitated. We are supposed to care for them.
Yeah, if she got really drunk... and one loser criminal guy rapes her. It is still on the guy because you cannot rape (or steal someone's wallet), regardless of the state they are in.
The greater picture here is that there were other people involved. I would hope that i would have the courage to stop a friend from commiting a crime... but, i KNOW I would not participate in said crime, mostly on moral grounds... but, also the fact that I am way too pretty and have too nice of an ass to be in prison.

i agree with everything you are saying ... but just as we try and acknowledge what role some kid who got sent the pictures was ... we need to acknowledge the role of the victim ... she was so drunk, she could not even NOT consent ... ignoring that aspect of the affair I think is irresponsible and will not help in the overall picture ... it's not to put blame on her ... simply that she put herself in a very bad situation ... i can list a myriad of examples where this would apply ... it seems like with rape - we want to shield ourselves from this ... sitting here and blaming two kids and/or their friends is the easy thing to do ... what it won't do is end the troubling statistic that 1 in 5 women in the US will be raped ... it's a complicated issue and if our goal is to change that statistic for the better - we have to look at everything ...

redrock wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

soo - is the lesson then to continue to get inebriated to the point of being unconscious and that's ok!?? ... is that what you would have learned here? ... .

No... the lesson here is that you do not rape a girl, humiliate her, film it, or participate in any other way, finding it the 'fun' thing to do, especially if the victim cannot 'fight' back. You learn that if you commit such an despicable act, you will be punished.

THAT is the primary lesson.

We do not know what these guys would have done if she had not been drunk. They may have drugged her, hit her, one or two attacking whilst others holding down? We don't know. RAPE is the issue.


Responsible intake of alcohol is another issue. Yes, one expose's oneself more to criminal acts perpetuated by others onto one's self but the ultimate responsibility lies with the cowardly criminal.

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Exactly. The lesson to be learned is that you need to get your moral compass pointing in the right direction.
The right thing to do would have been to dump her off at her front door... ring the doorbell... and run like Hell.
The right thing for the bystanders would be to say something... or DO something. That 'something' is something other than pulling out your phone to take a picture to update your Facebook Status.

We do polaris. We do understand that alcohol may have had it's part to play in this crime. And I'm sure the victim's parents will have had discussions with her. And I'm sure she has more than regretted her few vodkas.

But that is not the lesson or the crime.

But.... whether dead drunk or not, it is the guys that bear the full responsibility for the crime. Just like it will be the robber/mugger that will bear the full responsibility of his crime should he/she steal the wallet of some dead drunk person on the sidewalk.

Drinking is a personal choice, maybe not the right one. Getting raped or robbed is not the drunk's personal choice, it is the criminal's.

Whatever state you are in, you have the right not to be victimised because of this state (I know... a bit utopic).

Jeanwah wrote:

I agree with you guys, but there's been studies on human behavior where it isn't likely that, with a group of people in the vicinity of a crime being committed, one person will stand out among the others and detest what is going on and attempt to save the victim. Herd behavior at its worst.

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I've seen those studies and agree.
It does take courage and we prove to ourselves time after time that we are not courageous.

redrock wrote:

We do polaris. We do understand that alcohol may have had it's part to play in this crime. And I'm sure the victim's parents will have had discussions with her. And I'm sure she has more than regretted her few vodkas.

But that is not the lesson or the crime.

But.... whether dead drunk or not, it is the guys that bear the full responsibility for the crime. Just like it will be the robber/mugger that will bear the full responsibility of his crime should he/she steal the wallet of some dead drunk person on the sidewalk.

Drinking is a personal choice, maybe not the right one. Getting raped or robbed is not the drunk's personal choice, it is the criminal's.

Whatever state you are in, you have the right not to be victimised because of this state (I know... a bit utopic).

well ... i think i stated a bunch of times that all these kids should be held fully accountable ... but my point is simply that it's easy for us to want to just put all the blame on the guilty and wash our hands of it ... my goal should be the same as everyone's ... a society where 1 in 5 women aren't raped ... in order to get there we need to be honest with all the aspects of this issue ... from the sexualization of women to alcohol consumption to peer pressure to the overwhelming need for kids to want to fit in ... add the fact that most kids refused to talk ... it's the omerta and the notion that if you do talk - you are a snitch ... these are all things that have to be addressed if we want to eliminate rape ... ignoring these things does nothing of the sort ...