For those unfamiliar with the story of a 16 year old girl, a case of gang rape and humiliation, a football crazed Midwest town and a group of high school athletes, this New York Times article gives more details than you may want to know. A running chain of events can also be found at crime-blog, prinniefied.com. To summarize quickly however, Steubenville, Ohio is home to one of the more successful high school football teams in the Ohio Valley, the Steubenville Big Red.  In mid-August, a teenage girl was allegedly dragged/carried (literally) to 3 different parties where she was raped, urinated on and degraded as she remained unconscious as a result of either alcohol or drugs. As this was ongoing, the events were documented on Twitter and YouTube, with pictures being spread around of her without clothing as well as one picture showing 2, star football players carrying her around by her arms and legs.  Such was her level of unconsciousness that those individuals tweeting about it would sometimes refer to her as “the dead body” or “dead girl”.

As terrible as the events themselves were, what makes this case even worse is how the entire thing played out.  As evidence piled up (along with the tweets and pictures showing numerous high school students being involved) the town as a whole seemed to go into a sick sort of “protect our own” mode. This certainly isn’t to say that all Steubenville residents are to blame. I’m sure there are countless numbers of honorable and good people who reside in that city.  The local media and police however, did nothing to help the reputation of the town itself.

After being dragged from party to party, the girl was dropped off at her house, confused and disoriented. She was taken to the hospital and the next day, filed a police report. Local police encouraged anyone with information on the crime to come forward.  Despite the pictures and tweets that had “gone viral” locally, the police received 2 tips.  One was a phone call and the other was an individual who approached a police officer at the Steubenville high school football game.  The same football game where players who were pictured with the rape victim and mentioned specifically in posts as being present at the parties were playing.

Nearly 2 weeks later, after this had hit news outlets and all suspects had ample warning, police brought individuals in for questioning.  By this time, tweets had been deleted, YouTube videos were taken down and accounts were disabled and cell phone pictures were removed from phones.  The police recovered a total of 2 pictures on one individual’s cell phone. Ultimately, despite all of the pictures and tweets that had been saved to other people’s computers, police opted to charge two teenage boys with rape and kidnapping.  Three other individuals involved were given immunity by the local prosecutor in exchange for their testimony.   At their initial hearing, the kidnapping charges were dropped. The two individuals charged were 16 year olds, Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays, star players on the high school football team.

As many locals took to RollRedRoll to resort to victim blaming, a sub-group of vigilante hacker group, Anonymous, who call themselves Knightsec, seemed to decide that enough was enough.  On December 24, 2012, the group hacked the website, posted a demand for everyone to involved to come forward and issue an apology to the girl and her family, threatened the release of personal information of all involved including phone numbers, social security numbers and other private information, and issued a preliminary dox with some of the information.  They state that if everyone involved doesn’t come forward by January 1st, the full dox will be released. On top of that, Knightsec claims to have hacked the email address of the admin of RollRedRoll, James “Jim” Parks, and found nude photographs including possible child pornography.

Before the site was taken down, this message was posted on RollRedRoll:

Greetings Citizens of the world, we are #Anonymous, we are #KnightSec.

On December 23, 2012, we released a video detailing the story of a young rape victim in Steubenville Ohio who was attacked by the Big Red High School football team and raped and kidnapped carried party to party unconcious and intoxicated. Only 2 members were charged with the actual crimes, when everyone present was guilty.

In an effort to prove this, we gained access to the schools website via CPANEL login http://tinypic.com/r/ot0wok/6, and the webmaster James “Jim” Parks http://www.facebook.com/BIGREDMANOWAR personal email http://tinypic.com/r/2gwbclj/6 which we promptly found multiple nude photographs in.

We in turn locked him out of his own email, and backed up the contents to the web to preserve evidence. http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/405512/Emails.zip

We strongly urge local law enforcement to look into this email as possible child porn could be present.

We found one photo in this email that strongly resembles Savannah Dietrich http://imgur.com/D2UuS, https://www.facebook.com/Freedom4Savannah/photos_stream who was a victim of rape in louisville ohio with the same circumstances as Steubenville.

These photos and more can be found in the download link. We assure you that all photos are legitimate and can provide password access to email accounts on request by officials however they will not be released to the public for fear of data corruption.

By finding this photo in the email above we believe that Mr. Parks who is also a football team booster has been sending, possibly hiring the team to go to different parties and send him pics of girls they take advantage of.

The boys have even dubbed themselves Rape Crew, and further evidence can be seen in the video here: http://rutube.ru/video/5e440e56a0bf56bc88f6d9d59ed08db0/#.UNnMhonjm59.. We ask that the proper authorities do not allow the coverup of this potential criminal ring and that the victims do not go unprotected.

We are anonymous, We are knightsec, the wicked should expect us.

On top of the hacking and threats, a peaceful protest outside of Steubenville City Hall is now being organized by Knightsec.  The events are being called Occupy Steubenville and will be held December 29 and January 5.

As this case continues to grow stranger and stranger, I’ll be posting updates as they become available.

Out of respect for the victim, I must ask that her name not be given in any comments made.