‘When Rape Goes Viral’ looks at why cases like Steubenville happen

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The Trendy Regulation Library
‘When Rape Goes Viral’ appears to be like at why instances…

The Trendy Regulation Library

‘When Rape Goes Viral’ appears to be like at why instances like Steubenville occur

By Lee Rawles

March 6, 2024, 9:51 am CST

Three high-profile instances of sexual assault in 2012 adopted a primary sample: A teenage woman was sexually assaulted at a home celebration by a number of teenage boys whereas she was incapacitated by alcohol. The assaults had been recorded, and the photographs, movies and tales had been shared on social media or through texts. The photographs and movies had been used to ridicule the victims amongst their friends. These texts and posts later turned proof in prison instances.

These incidents befell in Steubenville, Ohio; Maryville, Missouri; and Saratoga, California, and sparked nationwide conversations about youths, expertise and sexual assault in 2013.

“The query gnawing at everybody, myself included, was: What had been these children considering?” writes Anna Gjika, a sociology professor who research crime and gender points.

Greater than 10 years later, Gjika has tried to reply that query in her new guide, When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault within the Digital Age. She took a detailed take a look at the three assaults in 2012 however identifies a lot of related situations which have occurred extra lately.

One of many components that the general public discovered surprising in regards to the instances was what number of bystanders filmed or photographed the unconscious women or the sexual assaults as they had been occurring, with out intervening.

In speaking to individuals concerned within the instances and to teenagers on the whole as a part of her analysis, Gjika discovered that the younger individuals didn’t consider their social media as archival a lot as “of the second.” They filmed and posted what was occurring round themselves as a result of they had been used to doing that.

“Sharing an expertise has change into an integral a part of the expertise,” Gjika writes.

On this episode of The Trendy Regulation Library podcast, Gjika and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles focus on her analysis into generational attitudes towards social media and sexual assault, the guarantees and pitfalls of digital proof in sexual assault instances, how social media may be empowering or degrading for survivors, the social duty held by the authorized neighborhood and the tech business, and what interventions could possibly be efficient to stop such assaults from happening.

Digital proof, corresponding to cellphone movies and texts, may be extraordinarily useful to prosecutors trying to show incidents of sexual assault, notably when victims are unable to recount their expertise as a result of they had been unconscious or impaired through the assaults.

However Gjika explains that this type of proof shouldn’t be uncomplicated. The best way that juries understand the proof will nonetheless be filtered by societal expectations and prejudices. Protection attorneys shouldn’t have the identical entry to digital proof from tech corporations and normally lack capability to course of immense quantities of information.

The experience, willingness and assets of police departments and prosecutors’ places of work to hunt out this proof additionally range extensively. And the victims may be additional traumatized by the use in court docket of photos and video of their assaults and the information that the pictures proceed to be disseminated on the web.

In closing, Rawles and Gjika focus on what actions may be taken by faculties, the authorized neighborhood and the tech business to stop such assaults or to help victims whose assaults have been digitally documented. Gjika thinks that instructional packages and trainings for teenagers should concentrate on peer teams and norms, slightly than emphasizing particular person duty, and “should be grounded inside adolescents’ lived experiences, slightly than on grownup fears and anxieties.”

She additionally argues that adults, in addition to teenagers, would profit from “moral digital citizenship initiatives,” the place ideas corresponding to privateness and on-line decision-making could possibly be mentioned. And she or he suggests the creation of government-funded organizations to help survivors with eradicating digital content material from the web.

In This Podcast:

Anna Gjika

Anna Gjika is an assistant professor of sociology on the State College of New York at New Paltz, the place she teaches undergraduate programs on crime and society, the sociology of violence, and gender and crime. Her analysis explores the intersections of gendered violence and expertise. She is the writer of When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault within the Digital Age.