<p>I suppose she deserves to be punished. What would be an appropriate punishment for a teen who throws a party with alcohol if 50 hours of community service is the sentence for molestation, rape and distributing pictures of same?</p>
<p>boysx3, I don’t think, “I was too drunk to know if I was raping her,” counts as a defense, and I’m sure you don’t either. </p>
<p>Nobody is going to buy, “I was so drunk I didn’t realize I was too drunk to drive,” and I don’t think “I was so drunk I couldn’t realize she couldn’t consent,” is one whit better. If you think you might accidentally rape someone because you’re drunk, don’t drink, or don’t be alone with a woman when you’re drunk.</p>
<p>hops, it sounds as though ALL the kids involved were drinking, including the sex offenders. But if no one called the cops, there’s no way to prosecute them.</p>
<p>Whether they were drinking, shooting heroin or stone-cold sober makes no difference to the case at hand…which, by the way, has been resolved except for the sentencing of the boys. So I don’t know why you keep going back to the party where all of this started. It seems like a distraction more than anything.</p>
<p>“On the matter of everyone being drunk, that is typically not an excuse to get you off the hook and they presumably weren’t drunk when they passed the pictures around.”</p>
<p>I think BCEagle91 makes a good point. It’s not just what happened at the party, when they were drunk. It’s that these boys added insult to injury after the fact by bragging about what they did and sharing the photos with others when they KNEW it would hurt Savannah. And then they have the gall to ask her to just forget about it so their lives won’t be ruined and they can go on to be jack***es to women at the colleges of their choice. They had many, many opportunities to show remorse for their behavior, but they didn’t. They deserve the punishment they are getting via social media shaming.</p>
<p>Like I said earlier, they certainly gave up any expectation of privacy when they violated her privacy by disseminating those disgusting pictures.</p>
<p>CF,</p>
<p>no of course drunkenness is not an excuse for rape. I’m just not sure whether it is rape when both parties think it is a good idea at the time. Which is why I tell my guys getting drunk and being with girls at the same time is a really bad idea (not that having too much to drink is ever a good idea).</p>
<p>Well, I’m glad she is not allowing herself to be re-victimized and was even willing to go to prison for the right to speak up. Good for her.</p>
<p>As to dragging this conversation down into the muck of who gets responsibility for doing what when everyone is drunk? Forget it. How about the fact that they posted and reposted those photos AFTER they were sober? This implies that they believed that her drunkenness allowed them the lisence to sober exploitation. Sick guys. Wouldn’t want my daughters anywhere near them.</p>
<p>Frankly, the fact that they and their families were willing to pursue this legally to protect the reputations of the boys is rather telling, as well. Frankly, their parents should have said, “you posted those pictures, you pay the price.” End of story.</p>
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<p>I don’t think it’s rape in that situation. </p>
<p>If I were a nasty person, I’d say if a man has consensual sex with a woman, and she later commits the crime of falsely accusing him of rape, he shouldn’t go around claiming to be a victim. After all, he must know that there are some women who falsely accuse men of rape, so if he wants to avoid being the victim of that crime, he shouldn’t go around having sex with women. It’s all his fault. But I don’t buy that line of reasoning.</p>
<p>Hops, </p>
<p>You’re assuming facts not in evidence. We know that the party was at Savannah’s house. I don’t know who supplied the alcohol. If you have any evidence for your claim that Savannah did, please cite it. The only thing I’ve read about it suggested that one of the boys brought a bottle of vodka to the party and Savannah was foolish enough to join them in doing vodka shots. But, I don’t know for sure who brought the vodka and I suspect that neither do you. I personally think it’s irrelevant, but if you really think it matters, please cite your evidence for the fact that Savannah bought the booze.</p>
<p>We also don’t know if Savannah was prosecuted for underage drinking. I doubt it, but if she was that’s confidential as a juvenile proceeding. We do know the boys weren’t prosecuted for underage drinking. </p>
<p>I don’t think only females can be victims. Do you remember the Matthew Sunshine case? Matthew got into a drinking contest chugging vodka shots. What he didn’t know was the contest was rigged. The organizers disliked him for some reason. So, they gave the other competitor left in the contest at the end shots of water, while Matthew got shots of vodka. When he passed out, they took off his clothes. They wrote awful things all over his body with markers. They took photos. Then they left him by himself. He died. They argued that they had no responsibility for his death. He was a minor. He drank. He was the only person responsible for his death. Do you agree? I sure don’t. </p>
<p>In this particular case, if the boys had just deleted the photos from their cell phones and stopped showing them to other people, Savannah would never have gone to the police. But they refused and told her she had taken off her clothes when she was drunk and let them take pictures. Therefore, she had no right to stop them. She knew they were lying because she knew that even drunk out of her mind she would not take her clothes off in front of a group of people. It was only after they refused to stop showing the photos to other people that she went to the police. </p>
<p>If you do some googling, you can see some not so nice posts by the boys’ friends which put forth the “she’s a skank who took off her clothes and posed for these photos” story. I know they are out there because I read them. They were posted AFTER the boys admitted taking off her clothes; Savannah couldn’t retaliate by saying that because they admitted it in a closed hearing. Now, we all can read the police investigator’s report of his interviews with the two boys separately and read for ourselves that they admitted it. They let–asked?–their friends to post a bunch of lies about her.</p>
<p>Savannah tweeted the names of the boys. She had about 200 followers back then. I’d hazard a guess that most of them already knew who the boys were. The attorneys for the boys moved for contempt and ONE OF THEM GAVE AN INTERVIEW TO THE HUFFINGTON POST in which he called Savannah a liar and said that the boys had only “touched” her. That’s what ignited the public interest–the idea that a victim of sexual abuse might go to jail for 6 months for identifying the boys who abused her AND that an attorney would call the victim a liar. Read the interview. Read what the boys said to the police investigator. Draw your own conclusion as to whether Savannah or the lawyer lied.</p>
<p>You claim “the LAW” prohibited Savannah from identifying her attackers. Please give me the citation for that “law.” I know of no law which says that the victim of any crime cannot identify the perpetrator who has plead guilty to the crime if doing so would expose the perp to risk. So, please tell me where that law is. Have fun searching for it because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>What may have happened is that the judge said that nobody could talk about the case. Savannah thought she couldn’t name the perps and apparently their attorneys thought so too. But the judge has indirectly said that she only meant that nobody could talk about what happened in court. In any event, the judge never put that order in writing and so without a record of what she actually said…the other judge found that nobody should be held in contempt for violating an order that hadn’t been written down. </p>
<p>As for Savannah having a public defender…I haven’t a clue how it works in Kentucky but in some states, especially when the witness is a minor and especially when there is sexual abuse involved, the court has an attorney help the victim who has to testify understand what will happen and how the whole procedure works. I don’t know but my GUESS is that’s why Savannah had a public defender.</p>
<p>I don’t know if anyone is still reading this but I still think there are cases in which juvenile proceedings should be kept confidential. I am afraid that the peculiar ugliness of this case is going to create bad law.</p>
<p>^^^
Great post. I don’t think the issue is whether juvenile crimes be kept confidential or not. I think (could be wrong) that the confidentiality only applies to the legal proceedings. I know lots of kids who were charged with misdemeanors at some point and it was talked about pretty openly in the community, families of the kids, etc. It was sealed/expunged in the courts but there was no reason why people couldn’t talk about it. I have never, ever heard of a victim being ordered silent about a crime. That’s just crazy. Especially in a case where the abusers pleaded guilty. </p>
<p>Hops,
Your under the impression that she committed a crime by talking about her rape. That’s not the case. She was charged in error. So even if we believed that a 16 year old rape victim who had been humiliated by her peers in her community deserved to be charged with speaking about something that happened to her, there was nothing to charger her WITH. Not legitimately.</p>
<p>^^^agree with this. From reading about the case, it was one of the rapist’s lawyers who wanted her charged with contempt because “she ruined his clients life”. He quickly dropped the attempt. It was never the court doing it or saying she had done anything wrong. </p>
<p>Ironically, all the attempts to protect these boys had made them much more infamous nationally than they would otherwise have been. Talk about karma.</p>
<p>Thought the youtube was spot on.</p>
<p>Wow, I just read through all of this and I feel sickened. I feel like I should respond to Hops, but at the same time I don’t really want to bother too much, so I’ll just say this: neither Savannah NOR the boys was charged with underage consumption of alcohol, and there is no record of who supplied the alcohol for the minors (although several sources seem to indicate that one of the boys brought the alcohol). </p>
<p>Also, this isn’t a typical rape case because it isn’t a case of he said/she said, who should we believe, etc. There are graphic pictures of them penetrating her with their fingers - which qualifies as rape - that are on the internet, and one of the boys admitted in court that he removed her clothes. This isn’t a question. Sexual assault was committed and documented, and she isn’t slandering the victims by releasing their names when they released pictures of themselves violating her onto the internet. From he sound of it, she wasn’t banned from saying their names and she should never have been prosecuted; however, the punishment they received was akin to a slap in the wrist. It can be debated whether or not they have suffered a more adequate punishment in the time since she tweeted their names, but the fact remains that they VOLUNTARILY sent these incriminating and awful pictures into cyberspace, and didn’t seem to care so much back then. Frankly, I’m sickened by how much she has been maligned. </p>
<p>Keep standing up for yourself, Savannah. You’re an inspiration to all of us.</p>
<p>Update. Here’s the order she violated [New</a> tapes reveal public fight in Dietrich case - WDRB 41 Louisville - News, Weather, Sports Community](<a href=“http://www.wdrb.com/story/19437414/new-tapes-reveal-public-fight-in-dietrich-case]New”>http://www.wdrb.com/story/19437414/new-tapes-reveal-public-fight-in-dietrich-case)</p>
<p>I don’t know why anyone is surprised by some of the sentiments expressed here and in similar conversations about this topic. </p>
<p>Victim blaming is absolutely rampant. Hell, it’s legal for the rapist to come after the woman for visitation rights if she becomes pregnant during a rape in some 30 states. Sexual assault programs are continually underfunded and it’s getting worse. The victim is on trial (figuratively) much quicker than the perp. </p>
<p>The statistics and laws on rape are absolutely horrifying to most people paying attention. But… when you read things like what’s been said on this thread… it’s not too surprising.</p>
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<p>And even if the woman doesn’t see it as a “gift”, that’s irrelevant. Because, you see, if she hadn’t been so lazy, she would have “shut that whole thing down” as good little rape victims are supposed to do. It’s a case of personal responsibility, and it’s her fault she’s pregnant.</p>
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<p>Being drunk does not constitute permission for sexual assault. Never. Ever.</p>
<p>I will be sending a “nice” email to the DA. I would love it if everbody would.</p>
<p>There was a story yesterday of a guy that did less than what these boys did on an airplane. The maximum penalties for doing this in the air (because there is no state jurisdiction) is life in prison + $250,000.</p>
<p>“The statistics and laws on rape are absolutely horrifying to most people paying attention. But… when you read things like what’s been said on this thread… it’s not too surprising.”</p>
<p>Yes, and apparently half our electorate is willing to put people in office who want to make it even worse for rape victims than it already is. Can’t believe this is happening in 2012.</p>