Story highlights
NEW: Witness says she and the alleged victim shared vodka at a party
Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'lik Richmond,16, are charged with rape
The boys are accused of sexually assaulting a girl at end-of-summer parties
Football players bragged of what they did to a 16-year-old girl, a prosecutor says
Two Steubenville, Ohio, football stars sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl, treating her “like a toy,” a state prosecutor said Wednesday in the opening statement of the teens’ rape trial.
Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, are accused of sexually assaulting the girl at a series of end-of-summer parties in August, according to prosecutors.
The case received widespread attention nationally after other Steubenville teens posted images of the alleged victim seemingly unconscious to social media sites.
Defense attorneys say the boys are innocent of rape. Mays is also charged with illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented material.
Although they are minors, they have been identified in court by the judge and attorneys, and in newspapers and other media reports. CNN is not naming the 16-year-old girl in line with its policy of not identifying the alleged victims of sexual assault.
Prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter detailed a string of degrading abuse she said the girl suffered at the hands of the boys, including having her clothes stripped off, while other teens joked about urinating on her.
She said they had “treated her like a toy.”
Some of the abuse was captured in cellphone images retrieved from either the Internet or their phones. One, Hemmeter said, showed the girl lying naked on her side, apparently asleep, with what appeared to be semen on her stomach.
Hemmeter said witnesses will testify that the girl was highly intoxicated – stumbling, slurring her speech, at times unable to walk.
Such impairment, Hemmeter said, would be the state’s focus in proving the allegations against Mays and Richmond, not whether the girl consented.
The girl, Hemmeter said, was “too impaired to say no, too impaired to say stop.”
In a brief opening statement, one of Mays’ defense attorneys, Brian Duncan, told the judge that his client did not rape the girl.
“Trent Mays did not rape the alleged victim, and the prosecution cannot and will not be able to establish and substantiate their claim,” Duncan said.
Richmond’s attorney, Walter Madison, did not make an opening statement.
Six witnesses for the prosecution testified Wednesday, including a 17-year-old girl who went to a party with the alleged victim. The witness said she and the girl shared a half a bottle of vodka, which they each poured into a flavored crushed ice drink. The alleged victim also had one beer, the witness said.
The alleged victim seemed to get drunk very quickly, the witness said.
About 12:30 a.m., the party broke up and the girl left with Mays and Richmond, according to the witness who said she pleaded with her not go. The witness said she didn’t see her again until the next day when she picked the alleged victim up at another home.
She described the girl as a “mess” with her shirt inside out.
Other witnesses said the girl appeared drunk on the night in question while she was at the second house.
Two police officer also testified, describing how they collected evidence.
During cross examinations, the teen’s lawyers’ tried to poke holes in the witnesses’ stories.
While being quizzed by defense attorneys, at least one witness said he did not see the alleged victim drinking and he did not see Mays involved in any sexual contact with the alleged victim.
Another witness said, during cross examination, that she saw the alleged victim bring a bottle of vodka with her to one of the end-of-summer parties in August.
The case, which is being tried before Judge Thomas Lipps without a jury, has cast an unwelcome spotlight on Steubenville, a small, down-on-its-luck town along the banks of the Ohio River.
Social media
Photos, video and social media messages – some of which the prosecutor displayed Wednesday in court – are at the heart of criminal charges against Mays and Richmond.
Crime blogger Alexandria Goddard, a former Steubenville resident, discovered and preserved many of the online messages about the case, at least some of which are now in the hands of authorities. The girl’s mother also gathered some of the material from social media and brought it to authorities.
One image circulated online and posted on a website maintained by Anonymous, a loosely organized cooperative of activist hackers, showed the girl, dressed in a T-shirt and blue shorts, her body limp, being held hand and foot by two males who appear to be teenagers.
Text messages posted to social networking sites that night seemed to brag about the incident, calling the girl “sloppy,” making references to rape and suggesting that she had been urinated on, Goddard has said. CNN has not been able to establish whether this is true.
In one 12-minute video, a teenager who is not charged in the case jokes about the girl’s condition, saying she must have died because she didn’t move during one assault.
Police got involved on August 14, when the girl’s mother reported the alleged assaults, according to Steubenville Police Chief William McCafferty. The family provided a zip drive showing a Twitter page, possibly with a photo, McCafferty said.
Unwanted spotlight
The allegations – and the shadow it has cast over the town – have gripped the area for months.
The case has attracted the attention of bloggers and even Anonymous, who have questioned everything from the behavior of the football team to the veracity of the investigation.
Steubenville was once a thriving steel mill town. With the mills closed, the town is a shadow of its former self as some of its residents moved away to find work elsewhere and some businesses closed.
Today, its population is primarily blue collar with a median income between $33,000 and $34,000, well below the national average.
The Steubenville High School football games have long been a gathering point for residents, who point to the team’s against-all-odds play that helped elevate its reputation in the state.
Critics have accused community leaders of trying to paper over rampant misconduct by players of the Steubenville High School team and have suggested that other students took part in the assaults or failed to do enough stop them.
While many residents express concern about the allegations against Mays and Richmond, they are also frustrated with how the town has been portrayed.
“We all want to see justice prevail for the victim and the defendants in this case. All of you are here today because you are doing your job and writing your story,” Susan Hershey, the president of the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce.
“There (are), however, always multiple sides to every story. There is the other side of our community, a side that has been overshadowed by this incident. Unfortunately, our community has been painted with one very unflattering, broad brush.”
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CNN’s Poppy Harlow and Brian Vitagliano contributed to this report.