Audrie Pott suicide: Grim picture of Saratoga teen's final online cries of despair

[alp227]

Wow. Right after the Rehteah Parsons case out of Canada becomes a worldwide story, now MY county where I've lived since age 6 has an eerily SIMILAR case. The San Jose Mercury News has an in depth article for Saturday's edition. Grab the tissues:

A few days after Audrie Pott killed herself, while her baffled parents were grieving and students across the Saratoga High School campus wore her favorite color, teal, in her memory, a couple of the 15-year-old girl's closest friends came to Audrie's mother and delivered a shocking message: "There is more to this than you know."

Sheila Pott rushed to check her daughter's cellphone, emails, texts and Facebook page. And then she found the haunting words of her beautiful, once-bubbly daughter: "These guys did (expletive) to me while I was sleeping," read one message. "This is the worst day of my life," read another.

Not only had she been sexually assaulted after drinking too much at a house party, her family's lawyers say, but pictures of her naked during the attack were being shared online.

Three days after her last online cry of despair, she was dead.

As Audrie's mother hunted for clues, a female sheriff's deputy assigned to patrol Saratoga High School began hearing whispers that at least one graphic and humiliating photo of Audrie was racing through social media. Audrie, who had gone to a house party in Saratoga on Labor Day weekend, had too much to drink and fell asleep in a bedroom and woke up to "the worst nightmare imaginable," according to her family's lawyer, Robert Allard.

Audrie's story swept across the country Friday, echoing recent cases in Nova Scotia, Canada, and Steubenville, Ohio, involving drinking,
sexual assault and online photos. The audacity of the boys to share the horrifying images in Audrie's case was the critical piece of evidence that led to their arrests on Thursday, authorities say, a stunning example of how cyberbullying can lead to tragedy and provide a digital trail for police.

"The bravado to think -- what were they thinking?" Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said in an interview Friday. "I don't know why they would think it would be OK."

After seven months of detailed investigation, including the confiscation of numerous cellphones and computers of students, sheriff's deputies arrested three 16-year-old boys on Thursday, pulling two out of Saratoga High School classes where they were still enrolled and one who had transferred to Christopher High School in Gilroy. They were arrested on suspicion of two felonies and one misdemeanor involving sexual assault and the distribution of the images. The boys are in custody in juvenile hall. This newspaper is declining to name the suspects because they are juveniles. It is uncertain whether they will be tried as adults.

According to state law, conviction of distribution of child pornography results in up to one year in prison, $2,000 fine, or both. Also on raping an unconscious person: "Any person who commits an act of sexual penetration, and the victim is at the time unconscious of the nature of the act and this is known to the person committing the act or causing the act to be committed, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for three, six, or eight years."

And start SCREAMING after reading THIS hideous reaction by the fucking school principal towards the end of the article:

A year before the Labor Day assault, Audrie went to school officials saying she had been bullied by boys, Vasquez said, although he would not say whether the incidents involved the same group of teens. Two weeks after Audrie's death, Saratoga High School Principal Paul Robinson dismissed claims that bullying had anything to do with her suicide. On Friday, Robinson deferred comment to the superintendent of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District.

Paul Robinson, let me tell you this: you are an incompassionate motherfucker who is not qualified to administrate a K-12 school. There's a sports radio host in the area more qualified to be principal than "Paul Robinson". His name is Damon Bruce. He did a passionate, uncompromising, searing commentary about the climate that enabled the Steubenville rapists and even made a promise about "the son I don't have" at the 5-minute mark:

And Pat Thurston is a liberal talk radio host whose weekend show is Saturday 6-9pm and Sunday 4-7pm on KGO radio AM 810. I expect her to cover this case at least one of the hours she has this weekend.

When I read about the Audrie Pott story, the Steubenville story, and then take a look at American culture from a wider angle, I swear sometimes: I am DONE with this country. We've got young people do not know jack about healthy sexuality. As a result you have women adopting the "Madonna/whore" fallacy, men whose hunger for sex corrupts their minds and removes any sort of empathy or understanding of consent, and people who do NOT take rape or sexual crime seriously. Which explains why (even on DU!!!) people joke about "dropping the soap" (I will alert ANY posts here that dare cross the line WRT Pott's alleged rapists), and even mainstream comedians like Daniel Tosh can joke about rape and have many of his stupid fans drone on like "oh it's just comedy".

Catching my breath for a bit. As Damon Bruce asked at 5:45 of the embedded video: where at Steubenville High was there SOMEBODY who could've said something and sent the rapists away? As the SJMN article I link shows...Audrie Pott spent the last week of her life knowing that everyone at her high school was LAUGHING at a photo of her being violated. Where was the kid who dared stand up for her and turn it in directly without question to the police? Where was the kid with a moral conscience at that house party who could have saved her instead of exploited her with that smartphone by running away and dialing 911? WHERE? WHERE? WHERE?????

If I were the DA of my county I think I'd press charges against ANYONE who saw the photo but failed to report it. Seriously. Once that happens that'll be America's wake-up call to rape culture.

[YarnAddict]

1. This story makes me SICK & ANGRY

One of the most galling aspects of this is that these rapists are being give an anonymity that they didn't allow poor Audrie. Pictures of her, naked, vulnerable, and enduring a heinous attack were spread around to anyone who wanted to see them; yet the general public doesn't know even the names of the rapists. Their names, faces, addresses, and any humiliating thing about them should be aired coast-to-coast. Then, maybe, they would have an inkling of what it was like for this poor girl!

I would take issue with only one thing you stated in your OP. Rape isn't about a "hunger for sex." It's about power over and degradation of the victim. Rapists are the sickest freaks in the world, and there is no punishment they could ever face that would be harsh enough.

[alp227]

2. And where do you think the "hunger of sex" comes from?

Do you not think "hunger for sex" and "power over and degradation of the victim" could be related?

[YarnAddict]

3. Uh, no.

A sex drive is a normal, natural human desire. The desire for power over another person and degradation of same is NOT normal or natural, and is nothing other than depraved.

[DiverDave]

5. Rape is the degradation of the soul

to rape is to say "you are not a person" you are an animal that I can do with as I wish.
To show you and all the world how powerful I am.
See! I can make a human into an animal and treat her just like one.

Rape is a life sentence, I know, I was raped from age 4 to 7.
I STILL struggle with the feelings of worthlessness. and that was 50 fucking years ago.

rapists should SUFFER just as much as their victims do.

[DiverDave]

4. My eyes are blurry I weep for that young woman, so much potential

God damn those boys AND their parents.
To not teach them that a passed out girl doesnt give consent to RAPE!
Oh, and you people that say it isnt the parents fault are WRONG, DEAD wrong.
These boys learned from thier 'loving' parents that girls are objects.
If not at home, then where did they learn it?
YOU have the obligation to teach your sons that girls are not receptacles for their fantasy's.

The parents are just as culpable period!

That little girl killed herself because those boys parents didnt teach them that she was a human being.
I bet they wouldnt treat a dog like that.
She was less then a dog to them.

They should rot in prison, and today and every memorial day ( Audries birthday) they should be forced to look at her pictures, watching home movies of her growing up.
And contemplating the MURDER they caused.

[DiverDave]

6. Why is this post not on the front page?