Girl Raped on Facebook Live
Chicago police have arrested 2 teenage boys and are looking for several other suspects in the sexual assail of a 15-year-old girl that was streamed on Facebook Live. Legal experts say some charges may exist possible for those who watched online, but that they could be difficult to show. Nova Safo/AFP/Getty Images hibernate explanation
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Nova Safo/AFP/Getty Images
Chicago police take arrested two teenage boys and are looking for several other suspects in the sexual assail of a fifteen-twelvemonth-sometime girl that was streamed on Facebook Live. Legal experts say some charges may exist possible for those who watched online, but that they could be difficult to testify.
Nova Safo/AFP/Getty Images
Chicago police accept at present arrested 2 suspects in the cruel sexual set on of a 15-year-old girl that was streamed on Facebook Alive. Both of those charged in the assault are teenage boys, ages 14 and xv, and police continue to look for more accomplices.
Nigh forty people may accept watched the rapes on Facebook as they happened, but none of them reported the crimes to the police. That's raising upstanding and legal questions about those who witnessed the offense, including whether they tin be charged for their inaction.
Chicago Police say the 15-year-onetime victim knew one of her attackers and was lured past him to a home on the city's West Side.
"From there, she was non immune to leave and she didn't consent to what occurred," said Chicago Police Commander Brendan Deenihan.
As many as six attackers brutally raped the girl.
"Due to the graphic content that I observed, I don't want to go into the detail of what was on the video, " says Chicago Police Superintendant Eddie Johnson. "Just I want to tell you, the young men responsible — they should be aback of themselves. They've humiliated themselves, humiliated their families, and now they're going to be held answerable for what they did."
They'll exist held accountable, Johnson says, because some of the suspects shot video of the brutal set on, and i streamed information technology live on Facebook, where most 40 people watched.
"We've seen a couple acts in this urban center at present in the concluding few months involving social media, and it merely disgusts me that people would look at those videos and not pick up the telephone and dial 911," says Johnson. "It makes you wonder, where are nosotros going, what are we doing every bit a society?"
The victim is "extremely traumatized," says Cmdr. Deenihan — so much so that she can barely even talk to investigators well-nigh what happened.
"We plain have a video of the incident, so we have verifiable, objective evidence of what occurred to this young lady, only she's just having a very difficult time," says the commander. "And so on summit of it, constant social media bullying ... people are really making fun of the victim and just a lot of off-color comments about what occurred, and now this is causing a lot more trauma to this victim."
The attack happened March 19, the day her mother reported her missing. The adjacent twenty-four hours, a relative of the girl said a teen in the neighborhood alerted him to video of the incident on Facebook. He took took screen shots of the set on to the girl's mother, which she took to constabulary.
Community activist Andrew Holmes says he was able to track down the full video and turn information technology over to law. He says he thinks anyone who viewed the gang-raping of the girl and did not report information technology should face criminal charges themselves.
"If they tin can look at this sexual assault and torture have place ... it tells me they really don't give a damn, you know, what happens to a homo out here," Holmes says. "You got over xl-some people watching information technology, and enjoying it. ... I hateful, it's your responsibleness to turn that footage over. On the other hand, what if it was your girl?"
Legal experts say information technology would be very difficult to prove criminal charges against someone who views a criminal offense on a live stream and doesn't report it.
"By and large, ordinary citizens are not legally required to report a law-breaking or to practise anything to stop it," says Stephanie Lacambra, criminal defence force attorney at the Electronic Borderland Foundation, an organisation that defends people'south constitutional rights and civil liberties in the digital world. "There is no general duty to be a good Samaritan."
There are some exceptions, though. Many states crave people in certain jobs and fields to report suspicions of child abuse and some other crimes, so Lacambra says prosecutors would accept to prove "that the charged individual has some specific duty to study a particular incident in the first place that was recognized by law."
But witnessing an declared criminal offense in the digital space is even more than nuanced that witnessing in person.
Showtime of all, "how practice y'all bear witness that the individual whose account was used to view a stream was in fact the person who viewed information technology?" asks Lacambra. Secondly, she says prosecutors would have to bear witness that the private watching the video knew what they were seeing was both existent and a crime.
"The public mostly should be more skeptical about what they view on the Net, because it's non a straight eyewitness account," says Lacambra. "It'south like reading an commodity and trying to discern if it'southward truthful or fake news — you don't know if the video you're watching has been photoshopped or if the details you're viewing are in fact true."
Lacambra says there could be jurisdictional issues, also, if the alleged criminal offense takes identify in one state or state but is viewed in another.
Law Professor Allen Shoenberger at Loyola University Chicago agrees that there is no general rule requiring viewers of a crime on a live stream to written report it — but says that in this case, because the victim is 15, child pornography laws may apply.
"The federal statute, for example, makes it quite clear that possessing those images is grounds for culpability, criminal culpability," says Shoenberger. "Merely watching them is grounds for criminal culpability."
And Shoenberger says anyone pressing the "like" button or commenting in a manner that could be construed as encouraging or promoting the rape could be charged with aiding and abetting the criminal act — though he acknowledges it could be difficult to prove that the viewer knew the victim was underage.
The two teenagers arrested in the instance both are charged with manufacturing and distributing child pornography, in improver to existence charged with aggravated criminal sexual set on, the statute for rape in Illinois.
"I approximate they deserve what they go by doing this really stupid act of showing criminal acts, by recording information technology or transmitting it," says Shoenberger. "It'due south just unbelievably imbecilic."
Chicago police say they haven't decided yet if they'll pursue charges confronting anyone who watched the set on online, saying they're starting time focused on finding the rest of those who attacked and raped the victim.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522574666/should-viewers-of-facebook-live-gang-rape-face-charges
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