Katie Rucke
Rape isn’t a new phenomenon, but posting photos and videos of rape on social media sites for all to see is changing the rape conversation and how survivors of rape recover from the trauma.
In During the past year, there have been multiple high-profile rape cases across the U.S. and the world, with notable cases in the United States occurring in Steubenville, Ohio, and Torrington, Conn., where support on social media was largely skewed in favor of the alleged rapists.
Not only has this cyberbullying been detrimental in the emotional recovery process for these rape victims, but was a large factor in the deaths of at least two teenage girls whose cases have been in the spotlight recently.
Fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott of San Jose, Calif., committed suicide eight days after she was raped after passing out at a house party. Photos of Pott being sexually attacked were posted online and she wrote on Facebook that her life was ruined since the whole school knew what had happened to her.
Robert Allard, the attorney representing Pott’s family, said that Pott’s classmates used cellphones to share photos of the attack, and said that the images went viral.
Allard says that over Labor Day weekend in 2012, Pott was at a friend’s house whose parents were gone. The teens got into the liquor cabinet and Pott had gone upstairs to go to sleep, but “woke up to the worst nightmare imaginable.”
Pott discovered via online material what had happened to her that night and also found that the three boys that attacked her were people she had considered her friends.
Though she was being consoled by her friends, Allard says Pott felt she couldn’t cope with the trauma anymore. The day she killed herself, she changed her Facebook status to say “worst day ever.”
“We’re talking about, other than murdering someone, the highest degree of a crime you could possibly do, which is to violate them in the worst of ways … and then to effectively rub her face in it afterwards,” Allard said.
It’s the “rubbing it in the victim’s face” aspect of putting photos and videos online that also was a large factor in the death of 17-year-old Canadian Rehtaeh Parsons last week. When she was 15, Parsons was raped by four boys. Though the 2011 incident was photographed and the photos were shared on the web, police initially concluded that there were no ground to charge anyone in the case. Public outcry convinced Nova Scotia’s justice minister, Ross Landry, to appoint four government departments to look into her case.
According to Parsons’ mother, the four boys who assaulted her daughter took pictures of the incident and circulated them to other classmates. As a result of the widespread circulation of the photos, Parson later received abusive text and online messages.
About a week ago, Parsons attempted to commit suicide by hanging. She was hospitalized and three days after the suicide attempt, was taken off of life support and died.
Parsons’ case received international attention in the past week after the online hacktivist group, Anonymous, who also publicized their discontent with the treatment of the rape victims in Steubenville and Torrington, shared they had solved the case in less than two hours.
In a press release, the group shared facts about the case and shared they were involved because “the facts clearly illustrate that several crimes have been committed in Nova Scotia. A 17-year-old girl killed herself because the police failed to do their jobs and charge a single person for any of them.”
The group shared that one of the boys “has made several public statements admitting that he did have sex with [Rehtaeh] on the night in question” and that “she was throwing up during the act.”
“For a moment let’s set aside the theatrics, the masks and the labels. We are a group of concerned citizens that have recognized an injustice in the system. We have taken it upon ourselves to point out that injustice to the public and we are asking the police to correct their incompetent handling of this case — a young girl has already died from it.”
Cyberbullying
Throughout all of these cases, Anonymous worked to expose the alleged rapists and abusers, since many community members and peers of the victims took to social media sites to vocalize their support for the abusers.
Schools like Torrington High School have also warned students that using social media to “disparage other Torrington students is entirely unacceptable.” But some groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Connecticut have raised concerns that limiting the conversations that can occur on social media is an impediment to the students’ free speech rights.
The ACLU Connecticut chapter’s legal director Sandra J. Staub released a statement in March, saying that “public school students need to know that the First Amendment is not merely a theoretical discussion topic but a real and vital guarantee of freedom in America that entitles them to express their views.”
Mint Press requested clarification from the ACLU about where the line is between free speech and a hate crime, but our requests were not returned before deadline.