There was discussion of how the eleven-year-old girl, the child, dressed like a twenty-year-old, implying that there is a realm of possibility where a woman can “ask for it” and that it’s somehow understandable that eighteen men would rape a child. James McKinley Jr., the article’s author, focused on how the men’s lives would be changed forever, how the town was being ripped apart, how those poor boys might never be able to return to school. The Times article was entitled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town,” as if the victim in question was the town itself.
There is video of the attack too, because this is the future.
The levels of horror to this story are many, from the victim’s age to what is known about what happened to her, to the number of attackers, to the public response in that town, to how it is being reported. I read an article in the New York Times about an eleven-year-old girl who was gang raped by eighteen men in Cleveland, Texas. There are crimes and then there are crimes and then there are atrocities.
