There are some stories that nearly defy all sense of reason. This is one of them. From the KC Star:
MARYVILLE, Mo. — There wasn’t much left by the time she arrived, just a burnt-out structure and the haze of smoke that lingered around it. The siding and gutters had melted. The roof was gone. Inside, piles of ash filled the rooms that had once bustled with the pleasant sounds of a family.
The KC Star looks back at a true horror; a pair of (alleged) Rape victims who were shamed, vilified, run from a community and then suffered a house fire.
The story begins some time ago..
Few dispute the basic facts of what happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 8, 2012: A high school senior had sex with Coleman’s 14-year-old daughter, another boy did the same with her daughter’s 13-year-old friend, and a third student video-recorded one of the bedding scenes. Interviews and evidence initially supported the felony and misdemeanor charges that followed. Yet, two months later, the Nodaway County prosecutor dropped the felony cases against the youths, one the grandson of a longtime area political figure. The incident sparked outrage in the community, though the worst of it was directed not at the accused perpetrators but at a victim and her family. In the months that followed, Coleman lost her job, and her children were routinely harassed. When it became too much, they left, retreating east to Albany. Coleman had hoped the move would allow them to heal in peace, that the 40 miles separating the towns would be enough to put an end to their bitter saga. Now, though, as she stared at the charred remains of her house, the distance didn’t seem nearly enough.
As always, without a conviction, there is nothing that is "for sure". What is known is that a young woman was invited out with a few boys over. A few hours later, she was found unconscious in the front yard in 22 degree weather. The police were able to come up with a few other important pieces: Video tape of sexual activities between an adult and a minor, and full confessions from those involved.
Sexual assault cases can be difficult to build because of factors such as a lack of physical evidence or inconsistent statements by witnesses. But by the time his department had concluded its investigation, Sheriff Darren White felt confident the office had put together a case that would “absolutely” result in prosecutions. “Within four hours, we had obtained a search warrant for the house and executed that,” White told The Star. “We had all of the suspects in custody and had audio/video confessions. “I would defy the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department to do what we did and get it wrapped up as nicely as we did in that amount of time.” News of the case shocked the town. Initially, sympathy was expressed for the girls and their families. “We’re very lucky,” the sheriff told the newspaper in nearby St. Joseph. “It was very cold, in the 30s, and people die laying out in the cold like that.”
So, yes, the perpetrators in this case admitted that they had boozed and bedded minors; one 14 and a 13 year old. So, with the confessions of all involved on tape, evidence taken including video, an an acknowledgment that the boys had left the girl out on the yard in 22 degree weather, this sounds like a case bound for trial, right? For some communities, though, the response to video evidence and confessions doesn't match the normal.
When she checked online, she discovered that many of the comments were aimed at Daisy. On Twitter, the brother of one of the boys at the Barnett home that night wrote that he hoped Daisy “gets whats comin.” Daisy was suspended from the cheerleading squad for her role in the night’s events. Barnett did not finish his senior year there, according to his lawyer. During his Senior Night with the wrestling team, Charlie was booed by some students. Among the comments that made it back to him in the weeks following the arrests: that his mother and sister were “crazy bitches,” that Barnett was blameless, and that Daisy had been “asking for it.”
The entire story is long.. and deserves to be read. The family, which fled the town back home is now staring down a significant financial loss; the complete and total destruction of their home. Their home was destroyed not because of an act of nature or an unfortunate accident. Their home was torched by (alleged) arson. I'm sure there are people in the town who know that what has happened is wrong, but many will remember Marysville by tweets like this which occurred immediately after the fire.
F--- yea. That’s what you get for bein a skank : )
It's been months since the fire with no answer. And the boys who were accused are all now at a university. Maybe, as said, they have learned their lessons on their own. But as the KC Star points out, their tweets don't seem to suggest that:
Two are now members of Northwest Missouri State University athletic teams, and Barnett is enrolled at the University of Central Missouri, his grandfather’s alma mater. Based on his Twitter account, before it was locked to non-friends, the events of the past two years haven’t dampened his enthusiasm for the opposite sex. In a recent retweet, he expressed his views on women — and their desire for his sexual attentions — this way: “If her name begins with A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z, she wants the D.”
We have to do a better job of telling people that there is a world of difference between sex and rape. Events like this encourage people to believe there are no differences, and that is a fault of everyone involved.
7:23 PM PT: Thanks for all the notice. This story, which ran in the KC Star on October 12 shocked most of us. It was picked up here, and Reddit and many other places and made a lot of noise. The KC Star article, while long is fantastic. There are also references in the paper and that article to earlier reports on this story as it developed.
There are a few things I wanted to point out, though, based on the discussion:
(1) I'm not calling for, nor am I advocating any sort of vigilante justice. I don't believe in it. Instead, I wrote this diary because of the culture that promotes such behavior.
(2) To those that take this direct word for word, no, the town did not all join together and burn the house down, and as I noted as this is still pending an arson investigation. My point there wasn't to name names, but to say that the community was completely aware of the issues, from a student being booed, removed from cheerleading squad and other events documented that someone in the community - basically anyone - could have stepped up and said "let's wait and see" at a bare minimum, rather than passively sitting by while this was going on.
(3) Finally, I recognize those in the thread (read down) who view this as "not rape". There are many ways to look at this, but there are two key parts I focus on.. yes, the Missouri law uses a somewhat antiquated standard to determine inability to give consent, and no, unless you were physically then all we have are the confessions, physical evidence and the word of the attacker and the victim, so it is technically possible that something else happened. It's not worth arguing that point further.
Most importantly, though: events like these remind us that we have a long way to go in how we handle this in our culture. The individuals who were involved clearly didn't learn much from this event, and those who made the claim have suffered serious damages. No matter how this was to turn out, shaming and wishing harm on someone because they make a rape claim is a poor way for a community to respond to something this serious. At a bare minimum, a community should work to provide safety to all involved. And they failed to do that, creating scapegoats.