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Loading...11-Year-Old Girl Gang-Raped By 18 Men In Texas
*Trigger warning*
In a story that is horrifying both because of its content and the media coverage that has followed in its aftermath, 18 young men and teenage boys, some as young as middle-schoolers, were arrested in the town of Cleveland, Texas, for gang-raping an 11-year-old girl last November. The police learned about the assault last November, when one of the girl’s elementary-school classmates told her teacher that she had seen a cellphone video of the attack.
According to an affidavit, which cited photos and videos as proof, the girl was offered a ride by a 19-year-old man, who took her to his house, forced her to disrobe, and along with several other men, sexually assaulted her. She was then taken to an abandoned mobile home, where the rest of the assaults occurred. Several of the attackers documented the event on their phones.
All of this is now just hitting the news. New York Times reporter James McKinley Jr.’s approach, which focuses on the way that the East Texas community has reacted to the assaults, is problematic, insensitive, and victim-blaming. It paints the attackers as well-meaning “boys” who were “drawn into” the horrible violence, and describes the victim as dressing “older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.” Although the alleged attackers are only now being arrested, and a trial has yet to commence, the coverage seems to indict the victim as if not more severely than the men who repeatedly raped an 11-year-old girl, while taking videos on their cellphones.
As Shakespeare’s Sister points out, by the fourth paragraph of the NYT article we know a significant number of details about the attackers; the victim has yet to figure in the story aside from her gender and age. McKinley quotes a woman who is dismayed at the idea that “these boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.” Of course, the trauma of being raped by almost twenty men is made to seem negligable by comparison.
To make matters worse, the description of the victim plainly implies that she was a deviant figure. She had been “visiting friends” in the neighborhood near the abandoned trailer in the months before her assault, and sometimes hung out with teenage boys near a playground. According to the woman quoted above, this means that the assault was the girl’s mother’s fault.
“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” she said. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”
McKinley then launches into a description of the town’s economic depression, and describes the trailer’s bleak interior. Instead of the story of a violent crime perpetrated by adults and minors against another minor, this angle encourages us to feel sorry for the small town that has been “shaken to its core.” The attackers are equally victims, and the victim is for the most part absent. The word “rape” is only used a few times in the article, the fact that the girl could not have consented is mentioned nowhere, and the tragedy is not that an 11-year-old girl was subjected to unspeakable violence, but that the “town” (represented through the one person quoted) doesn’t know how to react.
The Houston Chronicle‘s coverage is equally bad. Describing the victim’s Facebook postings, Cindy Horswell writes,
“Sometimes she comes across like a little girl, such as when she talks of her special talent for making “weird sound effects” and “running in circles” to overcome nervousness.
But she also makes flamboyant statements about drinking, smoking and sex. Yet her vulnerability pokes through the tough veneer as she tells of “being hurt many times,” where she “settled for less” and “let people take advantage” and “walk all over” her. She vows to learn from her mistakes.”
As Margaret Hartmann writes on Jezebel, “Publishing information like that would be wrong if the victim was an adult, and it’s totally reprehensible in the case of a victim who “comes across like a little girl,” because that’s exactly what she is.” The idea that this girl needs to “learn from her mistakes” is absurdly offensive. It baldly implies that because of her actions, she was raped.
There’s one acceptable response to all of this coverage, and it’s outrage. As Liz Henry passionately writes, “The media is reporting on how she dresses, what the town thinks of how she dresses, where she hangs out, whether she cusses on her Facebook page… ALL COMPLETELY NOT RELEVANT to her being kidnapped and brutally gang raped.”
This is a story about a child who was kidnapped by an adult and forced to have sexual intercourse with a large number of men. The act was recorded and somehow made its way back to her elementary-school classmates. These are the events that McKinley, Horswell and other reporters should be writing about – not about the town’s economic decline, and certainly not what the neighbors think about the victim or her mother.
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Read more: gang rape, media coverage, media sexism, rape, sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual violence, texas, victim-blaming, violence, womens rights
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759 comments
+ add your ownOf course the adults guilty of raping this girl should be tried and if convicted sent to prison.
But the young boys were probably either forced or encouraged to participate and therefore, if possible, they should be rehabilitated and given a second chance.
As a man, I am more than deeply disturbed by the actions of the adult males. Not only did they participate in a despicable crime against a young girl (and I don't care how she was dressed or who she hung out with) but they sent a message to the young boys that real men rape and women and girls (especially young girls because they are easier to "force") are on this planet for only one thing - to please men whether they want to or not. Yuck!
Typical "blame the victim" bs. Even if the victim is an eleven-year-old girl.
Hasn't the media learned anything--will people never learn?
The rape was not caused by "what the girl wore", who she hung out with, or how poor the town is.
Neither the girl nor her mother caused the rape.
The rape was caused by the garbage who thought it up and decided it would be a good idea. The town and it's backward-thinking people also need to get some "credit" for fostering a climate that would consider rape the fault of the victim and her mother.
...and "these boys have to live with this the rest of their lives"? Such is the mindset of many people--that these "boys" might be asked to go on trial (and perhaps even endure negative publicity) causes some to be sympathic to these criminals--these child-molesters!! It simply defies belief!
I think we all already know how the trial will turn out--many, many Texans are proud of their "good ole boy" beliefs.
Sigh, I had a longer thing typed out because I have been following this since it was first reported around Thanksgiving and I couldn't believe no one was reporting it but seriously after reading the NYT and Chronicles take on it I am disgusted and just too damned fed up with the continuance of justifying rape and the rape culture!!!!! Both of the "reporters" and any others that try to blame the victim and claim the "young men" we're drawn into it and "how will it affect the rest of there lives" should be reprimanded and boo out of the papers for their lack of human compassion to the victim and all the other victims of this rape culture who are the ones who carry the real scars NOT the perpetrators!!!
That's the buy-bull belt for you...
I really hope these pieces of shit get to experience the joys of gang rape in jail. And I hope it messes them up for the rest of their rotten lives. As far as the general attitudes and media coverage: They're obviously a bunch of evil, inbred imbeciles and idiots.
Since this was Texas, I am not surprised. They pride themselves on their macho attitudes. I have lived in texas and while there I was blamed for 'inflicting' my daughter who was born with birth defects on the people of Texas. Even special ed teachers felt put upon by her existence. I even had another mother tell me she got the same treatment from people. That they take their stupidity out on a small girl is not surprising.
the story needs a correction. the comments are right on. the article refers to 'young men and teenage boys', variably referring to them as 'males'. not a man was in the bunch, keinen menschen. this was a gang of legal majority adult males with a gang of teen boys, none of whom had any sense of right, consideration, regard, propriety, or recognition for the life and being of the young 11 year girl no matter what she may have been wearing in our sexualized prurient society. this was a gang of overaged oversized males of the species with mentalities better suited for pre-school children. they are despicable slugs not capable of handling adolescent or adult responsibilities. I suggest the public stockade for this group of 'infants', their parents and supporters, and 1 rotten tomato for the NYT reporting team and editors.
Just in case you thought that that case was an isolated incident...Ex-Gay Minister Molests Boys
Youth pastor, Brent Girouex, of the Victory Fellowship Church in Council Bluffs Iowa has been arrested for molesting at least 8 men aged 14 to 23 while trying to cure them of their same sex sexual attractions.
A former youth pastor arrested in Iowa on 60 counts of suspicion of sexual exploitation allegedly told teenage boys he was trying to help them gain “sexual purity in the eyes of God.”
Thirty-one-year-old Brent Girouex, a former youth pastor at Victory Fellowship Church in Council Bluffs, turned himself in to the police in February after four young men came forward with allegations against him, The Daily Nonpareil reported.
Girouex has been released on a $30,000 bond and is due back in court on April 21. If found guilty, he faces up to five years on each charge.
Court documents show Girouex told investigators he had sexual contact with a teenage boy 25 to 50 times over a four-year period, starting when the boy was 14-years-old. He allegedly told investigators that it was his duty as a youth pastor “to help [the teen] with homosexual urges by praying while he had sexual contact with him.”
Oh and by the way, you really think that being taught "biblical morals" would have made any difference? http://timesfreepress.com/news/2011/feb/17/youth-pastor-accused-of-statutory-rape-with-teen/
Very glad to read the last two comments (LM W and Dodie H). It's absolutely maddening to see how much attention is focused on the parents of the VICTIM of this disgusting CRIME. What the kid was wearing and her lack of supervision is 100% a different issue to the attacks committed against her. It's the attackers and their lack of morals, empathy or any emotional or ethical intelligence you want to focus on in this case.
I don't think this is a religious matter at all. It is a MALE ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN that is prevalent throughout the entire world. What happens in war? Women & girls are raped & abused. It happened in Bosnia, the Congo,Rwanda,a war in Bangladesh,Japanese "comfort women" in WWII, & every other war I've heard of.The MALE PACK MENTALITY in which men feel empowered to do as they please with women & everything else in their path. The problem here is that in many if not MOST cultures,large numbers of men see women as sex objects to be taken & used at will.Many use religion as a way to teach woemn to accept it. Our society doesn't help because sexual irresponsibility & grossness,over sexualization of children..esp little girls.., and the media's preoccupation with the breasts & butts of female celebs only make it worse. Clothes for women are designed to emphasize those areas & women are encouraged to have perfect bodies & put them on display.Little girls' clothes often make them look like tramps. Girls are encouraged to wear these clothes to be "trendy" & "fashionable" & when they do and tragedies like this happen, THE GIRLS ARE BLAMED & THE BOYS AREN'T, because "boys will be boys". Add to all that the lax & permissive parenting(?) that is rampant.
How sick & stupid can you get?
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