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"  After a highly publicized case that garnered a disturbingly polarizing reaction across the country, Steubenville high school football players Trent Mays, 17, and Ma&amp;#039;lik Richmond have been found guilty of raping a drunk 16-year-old girl whose name has not been made public. So why does everyone seem to be directing their heartfelt sympathy toward the convicted rapists? Once again, we place the blame on the victim. The Rust Belt town of Steubenville, whose pride in their high school football team has carried them through tough economic times, has been torn apart over the case, reports The New York Times. Dissention in Steubenville, where their jocks are heroes, is only to be expected. But among those who believe the boys have been wronged, shockingly, was a CNN correspondent Poppy Harlow: &amp;quot;Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart.&amp;quot; A legal expert who was also interviewed in the segment noted that the verdict would &amp;quot;haunt [Mays and Richmond] for the rest of their lives.&amp;quot; Right. Because they RAPED a girl, and as if that wasn&amp;#039;t enough, they had the arrogance to put it on the Internet. While the comments on CNN are hardly the same sort of Steubenville rapist sympathizers you might find on Twitter (many of them blame the girl for getting too drunk), their comments certainly leave a sour taste in your mouth, don&amp;#039;t they? On the night of August 11th, after having a few drinks and following Mays to a series of parties, the girl woke up naked in an unfamiliar basement. It was only later that she discovered what had occurred in the six-hour period that she&amp;#039;d blacked out--because of an Instagram photo of Mays and Richmond dragging her limp body as well as a YouTube video of a classmate joking about her condition (&amp;quot;She is so raped right now.&amp;quot;) And although it&amp;#039;s disgusting, we should be glad they did. These incidents occur at parties regularly, and it&amp;#039;s pretty clear that the visual aids used in this trial have been a rude awakening to people who wanted to pretend that these boys (and others implicated in similar cases) are innocent. Both Richmond and Mays penetrated the girl with their fingers in the back of a car (in Ohio law, digital penetration counts as rape) and one photo taken in the basement shows the unconscious girl with Mays&amp;#039; semen on her. The next day, Mays sent the girl increasingly frantic and bone-chilling text messages that all but admitted his guilt, but urged her not to tell, lest he get kicked off the football team. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll just never do anything nice for you again.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m about to get kicked off my football team.&amp;quot; She replied: &amp;quot;The more you bring up football, the more pissed I get, because that&amp;#039;s like all you care about.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You know that&amp;#039;s not all I care about, but that needs to be taken care of first.&amp;quot; If that doesn&amp;#039;t break your heart, this will: Two friends of the victim, now former friends, testified on the defense side of the trial, claiming that the accuser was known as a liar. Mays was sentenced to 2 years in a juvenile facility and Richmond to 1, but both boys could be imprisoned until they&amp;#039;re up to 21 years old. After the trial, the girl&amp;#039;s mother addressed the crying defendants: &amp;quot;Human compassion is not taught by a teacher, a coach or a parent. It is a God-given gift instilled in all of us,&amp;quot; the victim&amp;#039;s mother said after court was adjourned. &amp;quot;You displayed not only a lack of this compassion, but a lack of any moral code.&amp;quot; She added that her daughter will persevere and won&amp;#039;t let this define her. Follow Anna on Twitter: @annabreslaw Image: AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, Pool "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a12080/steubenville-rape-guilty/>