UPDATED: This is the most brutal, savage, inhuman crime I have read about it in a long time. In addition to the individuals who were directly involved, a crowd of witnesses gathered to watch for almost the entire time the girl was being raped, and did nothing. According to this CNN report, some of them participated:
A California high school student who police said was gang raped in a two-and-a-half-hour assault outside a homecoming dance remained hospitalized in stable condition Monday, two days after she was flown from the attack scene in critical condition.
As of late Monday, two suspects had been arrested in the case and a third was being questioned.
“There is one individual in custody who has made some spontaneous statements that have led me to believe that he is culpable for what happened,” Richmond police Lt. Johan Simon said.
Nineteen-year-old Manuel Ortega, described as a former student at the school, was arrested soon after he fled the scene and will face charges of rape, robbery and kidnapping, police said.
A 15-year-old was later arrested and charged with one count of felony sexual assault. A third teenager was being interviewed, according to Lt. Mark Gagan of the police department in Richmond, California.
Melissa McEwan is the only other blogger writing about this so far, which is shocking and upsetting in and of itself:
This, via a whole bunch of Shakers, though Elle was the first to send it to me late last night, is one of the most profoundly upsetting stories that’s come across my desk, so to speak, in five years of blogging. I couldn’t even get through reading the details of the case without sobbing.
The details are these [again, strong trigger warning]: A fifteen-year-old girl was brutally gang-raped for more than two hours by at least four assailants, each of whom committed multiple sexual assaults, while as many as 15 other young men stood and watched, and not a single one of them called police or in any way helped the victim.
The attack happened on school grounds during a high school Homecoming Dance, and as witnesses went back in, they would tell other young men, who went out to watch and/or participate. Police were called after someone overheard people who had attended the assault scene “reminiscing about the incident,” and found the victim just before midnight, lying under a bench where her rapists had abandoned her, unconscious and in critical condition.
I just don’t understand how human beings can do such things. My mind and my heart just can’t take it in. With regard to the victim of this atrocity, I’ll just quote Melissa, because I can’t say it better than she did:
I really can’t begin to sufficiently convey my profound compassion for the survivor of this inhuman assault, my sadness at thinking about what enormous work her recovery will be, my grief, my anguish, my terror that no one helped her, my fervent wish for justice.
May she be given strength and love in a struggle that will last the rest of her life.
UPDATE: I just saw that Michael Stickings (at The Reaction) and Larisa Alexandrovna (At-Largely) have posted on this story.
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