The Trendy Legislation Library
‘When Rape Goes Viral’ appears to be like at why circumstances like Steubenville occur
Three high-profile circumstances of sexual assault in 2012 adopted a fundamental sample: A teenage lady was sexually assaulted at a home occasion by a number of teenage boys whereas she was incapacitated by alcohol. The assaults have been recorded, and the photographs, movies and tales have been shared on social media or through texts. The photographs and movies have been used to ridicule the victims amongst their friends. These texts and posts later turned proof in prison circumstances.
These incidents came about in Steubenville, Ohio; Maryville, Missouri; and Saratoga, California, and sparked nationwide conversations about youths, know-how and sexual assault in 2013.
“The query gnawing at everybody, myself included, was: What have 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 an in depth have a look at the three assaults in 2012 however identifies various comparable cases which have occurred extra just lately.
One of many components that the general public discovered surprising concerning the circumstances was what number of bystanders filmed or photographed the unconscious ladies or the sexual assaults as they have been occurring, with out intervening.
In speaking to folks concerned within the circumstances and to teenagers normally as a part of her analysis, Gjika discovered that the younger folks 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 have 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 Legislation 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 circumstances, how social media might be empowering or degrading for survivors, the social accountability held by the authorized group and the tech business, and what interventions might be efficient to stop such assaults from going down.
Digital proof, akin to cellphone movies and texts, might 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 have been unconscious or impaired throughout the assaults.
However Gjika explains that this sort of proof isn’t uncomplicated. The way in which that juries understand the proof will nonetheless be filtered by way of 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 knowledge.
The experience, willingness and assets of police departments and prosecutors’ places of work to hunt out this proof additionally range broadly. And the victims might be additional traumatized by the use in courtroom of pictures 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 might be taken by colleges, the authorized group 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 give attention to peer teams and norms, moderately than emphasizing particular person accountability, and “have to be grounded inside adolescents’ lived experiences, moderately 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 akin to privateness and on-line decision-making might be mentioned. And he or she suggests the creation of government-funded organizations to help survivors with eradicating digital content material from the web.
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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 know-how. She is the writer of When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault within the Digital Age.
