Less than a week after Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were convicted in the Steubenville rape trial, new video has been released of police officers interviewing teenage partygoers who witnessed the victim's increasing state of intoxication.
Farrah Marcino, 16, told authorities, "I could tell that she was gradually getting more drunk and worse throughout the night," adding, "Just, like, that she couldn't, like, she didn't walk."
18-year-old Anthony Craig, who told detectives that he took photos at the home where the assault occurred, but that they were deleted, described the victim as "a mess," saying, "she wasn't responding." Craig informed police that when Mays and Richmond carried the victim out of the house, "she was passed out."
Marcino told police that despite the fact that she and her friends tried to tell the (unable to walk, unresponsive) victim to not go with Mays, it didn't work - "Like, we just kept trying to tell her: ‘You don't want to do this. You don't want to go with them.' I just let her do what she want[ed], which I understand was wrong."
Investigators are concerned with why the bystanders failed to intervene and, instead, turned it into a "social media event."
Documentarian Denise Evans points to the lack of impulse control in the adolescent brain in culmination with a mix of "alcohol, social media and power":
Think about the number of students that witnessed this, that saw this. What about the ones that didn't text or tweet, but that were there watching. ...If you're drinking alcohol - a lot of teens are drinking alcohol - they just have entered the phase where decision-making is completely gone out the window. There's not deciding right or wrong in the moment.
[via ABC]