Rape as Free Speech? I’m really not understanding this: City’s statement Steubenville ‘Rape Crew’
Four prominent national advocacy groups are trying to pressure Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine to charge former Steubenville High School student Michael Nodianos — aka the shithead whose comedy routine based on the now infamous rape case involving the school’s football players was caught on video — with failure to report a crime.
Steubenville officials have said repeatedly that there’s nothing they can do about the video, even though they think it sucks. On the city’s official website to “spread facts” about the case, it states:
Nothing in Ohio’s criminal statutes makes it a crime for someone to ridicule a rape victim on a video or otherwise say horrible things about another person. Further, nothing in the law allows someone who says repugnant things on Twitter, Facebook, or other Internet sites to be criminally charged for such statements. Steubenville Police investigators are caring humans who recoil and are repulsed by many of the things they observe during an investigation. Like detectives in every part of America and the world, they are often frustrated when they emotionally want to hold people accountable for certain detestable behavior but realize that there is no statute that allows a criminal charge to be made.
But Ohio Law decrees that “no person, knowing that a felony has been or is being committed, shall knowingly fail to report such information to law enforcement authorities… Whoever violates division (A) or (B” of this section is guilty of failure to report a crime.”
Ohio National Organization for Women, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Justice for Children and Ultraviolet sent a letter to DeWine asking him to investigate and file criminal charges against Nodianos and any other people responsible for the crime.
More: There Might Be a Way to Prosecute the Leader of the Steubenville ‘Rape Crew’