A blizzard of text messages sent and received by Steubenville, Ohio rape suspect and football player and his friends paint a harrowing and horrifying portrait of the night of the alleged gang rape. Yahoo! Sports
reported that for more than two hours on Tuesday, forensic specialist JoAnn Gibb read selections from the thousands of text messages that were sent and received on the night of the incident and in its aftermath.
Two suspects, 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma'lik Richmond are facing rape charges and are being tried in joint trials in Steubenville. Both boys are players on the town's champion football team, a factor which has purportedly clouded the investigation and caused prosecutors to drag their feet rather than risk opprobrium by dragging two of the town's young heroes before the court.
Nonetheless, the texts, pulled from the phones of 17 students, paint a damning portrait of Mays and his codefendant, as well as many of the town's young people. The messages range from profane to disturbing, enraging to pathetically sad.
The sheer volume of texted information taken in as part of the investigation was like nothing Katie Hanna of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Assault had ever seen before, one of the largest cell phone culls in state history.
