No problem, Eric. The date jumped out at me and my first thought it was a European date, then I realized that wasn't right either. I usually use tapatalk on my phone so I can't do much of the copy/pasty stuff either.
One of the things that has bugged me about this case, and reason why I have not swallowed the party line is the all-out attempted crucification of Jane Hanlin & her family. If she handled the case unethically, show some proof. None has ever been offered, and instead, further attempts to smear her are made by those saying she hosted an alcohol-fueled teenage party where a 15 (some people want to make victim younger than she is) - 16 year old was violated in indescribable ways. And Jane Hanlin's star-athlete son, of course, was among those raping this poor girl. What are the odds of ALL of those things occurring in real life? It just sounds like bad fiction, and has always smelled like somebody with an agenda was behind many of these claims of Steubenville corruption & cover-up. Occ Steub, aka Frankie Francis, has already been revealed to be a multi-convicted drug felon with a longstanding history with both Jason and Jane Hanlin. And now it comes to light that Brandon DiMichael, aka AnarchistOH and half-brother to Alex Goddard, also likes to use & distribute the puff. Jason Hanlin, we meet again!
I have come to the conclusion that
majority of the kids, and that's pretty much what they are, in Anonymous are decent people who take on causes with mostly good intentions, but in this case, they have been grievously deceived by this group of low-life pretenders/criminals who feigned to care about the victim. In actuality, they have no empathy for her, as displayed by the callous way they published an unredacted transcript and made no apologies for it. Yes, media people have had it, and any one of us as individuals could go buy our own copy, but a case involving underage victims, particularly sex crimes, should never be distributed on the web.
I think the girl was sexually assaulted that night by two people. The widely distributed picture shows a drunk girl passed out. From what I've seen it is fairly common practice for the younger people these days to take pictures like that to embarrass their friends. I'm inclined to believe that, if it were a boy in that condition, far worse things would have been done to him for the sake of the picture. I don't think any of the kids at the first two parties had any serious thoughts that the girl would be raped when she departed. Their main concern would have been getting an obviously impaired person away from the notice of Mrs. H. Three boys did witness something, documented something, & shared that information with others
after the fact. All three witnesses seem to recognize on some level what was going on was wrong, and when a half-hearted attempt to stop it went rebuffed, ALL fled the scene. Based on a snippet of testimony from the transcript I think one may have even left to get a girl to intervene in the situation. There is no excuse for the brutish, morally reprehensible behavior of those through video, tweets, etc., afterwards, but as it's been said time and again, it was not criminal behavior.
I think the issue that is truly being swept under the rug here, is that we have a serious underage drinking problem going on. Some parents will brush it off b/c we've all chugged a few beers or sipped wine coolers in high school, but the new designer liquors are another animal entirely, and people just do not recognize the dangers. Just my 50c worth.