A story that was a local and an internet crime story made it to the pages of the NY Times written by James McKinley, Jr. Along the way, the story line made a curious turn.
The facts of the story are these: an 11-year-old girl in the small Texas town of Cleveland was gang-raped by about 18 boys and men. We know it happened because there are video records of the events. We know it was rape because 11-year-old children cannot legally consent to sex.
Gang rape is not something that civilized people excuse. Gang rape of children is worse. Yet the treatment the crime received in the NY Times is curious. In the Times, the focus was not on the effect gang rape has on a young girl but the effect that criminal prosecution for this crime has on the perpetrators.
The NY Times is no stranger to stories of gang rape. A few years ago its news and editorial pages were devoted to the accusations of a Durham, NC stripper/prostitute who claimed to have been gang raped by members of the Duke lacrosse team. Those stories focused on the evil that lurks in the hearts of rich white athletes at exclusive colleges. When the accusation turned out to be bogus and the prosecutor punished for pursuing the case for political reasons, the Times treatment was straight out of Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities.”
Was that the reason the Times decided to make this a story about young men having their lives ruined by being accused of a crime? Could it be that they learned a lesson from the Duke Lacrosse case? That seems unlikely. There was no physical evidence in the Duke Lacrosse case; the Cleveland rapes were videotaped. The crime is racially charged, dividing the community.
The tone of the NY Times story mirrors that of Quanell X, leader (according to Wikipedia) of the New Black Panthers in nearby Houston. Like the NY Times reporter, Quanell X focuses on the rapists.
“Listen to me good, you stand by your children and don’t let them convince you to walk away and take a plea deal for some trumped up charges.”
According to a TV reporter, he accused the police of being like the KKK. Like the NY Times reporter Quanell X blamed the girl’s parents. The Times reporter uses a neighbor to introduce the parents fault in this:
“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record.
In a classic case of blaming the victim, the NY Times notes:
They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.
New Black Panther Quanell X:
“She lives in another community. If she lives in another community you mean to tell me that the only men in Cleveland Texas that had sex with that girl are black men that’s locked up in that jail.”
Following a public push back to the tone of the original article, the NY Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane promised that the NY Times would print another story that was more properly balanced between blaming the rapists and blaming the 11 year old girl.
Under our system of law, you are innocent until proven guilty. It’s possible that some of the men accused of this gang rape are innocent. It’s instructive that the original story chose to present the rape from the perspective of the New Black Panthers. The episode is racially charged. The girl is Hispanic, the rapists are Black. According to some reports, there is tension between the Hispanic and Black communities, not just in Cleveland. The NY Times, always a bellwether for Liberal opinion, may just have taken sides.
Some may say that this is a teachable moment.
6 comments:
Countries like Norway and Sweden (I am myself a norwegian) has taken in hundreds of thousands of people from the third world during the last 40 – 50 years. The populations of Stockholm and Oslo are now concisting of between 20 – 30 % of people of non-European origin. And the numbers are growing at a relatively fast rate. Anybody who opposes this development is branded as racist. One of the most frightening aspects of this development is what it has done to the rape-rate in our countries. 40 years ago Sweden used to have below 1000 police-reported rapes per year. The number now is 6000 per year. Sweden has developed from beeing amongst the safest countries in the world in this respect, to becoming one of the unsafest. In Oslo, over a 3 year period, amongst 41 assault rapes committed, all 41 were carried out by men of non-european origin. In Oslo, amongst all rapes reported in 2007, 72.8 % were carried out by men of non-european origin. In Sweden, in a report worked out for the high court in 2001, a strange fact came to the surface. 85 % of the rapists had non-swedish origin.
Since then no research about the race or origin of rapists has been published in Sweden. If the facts of the situation does not suit a society (that is beeing more dominated by leftist and feminist powers than probably any other single country in Europe) then those facts must be hidden.
The rape victims in Norway and Sweden are in a huge majority of norwegian and swedish origin.
Still there are no demonstrations in the streets of Norway and Sweden. Group rapes that were unknown of in these countries 50 years ago, are now fairly common. The newspapers try to hide the racial aspect. The immigration is beeing kept at a high level. Anything else would be considered racist.
I have myself traveled in countries like Marocco, Algeria, Niger. There were no drinking girls with sexy outfits to be seen in the streets in those countries. There is a good reason for that. They would have been concidered whores and animals and they would have ended up raped. In norwegian and swedish cities the story is different. Yet the leftists and the feminists have decided that these two cultures shall be mixed in our countries, and if something bad comes out of it, that shall not be spoken of.
What I see in our countries today is a scary willingness to sacrifice even our own girls for the sake of something “good” (The “good” beeing the multicultural tolerant society that the euoropean left and socialists and feminists are eagerly striving for).
One day I hope that a great number of our politicians and journalists are beeing put to court for their cooperation in this unjustice. However, the most guilty of them all, to me seems to be the feminists and the white liberals, as nobody seems to be as willing to accept this rape epidemic as them. Nobody seems to be as willing to put smoke over the broader picture and to silence the critics of what is happening
Why am I not surprised to see the difference between how the NY Times portrayed the Duke students who did not rape an adult woman and the Texas gang that actually did rape this 11 year old girl.
Liberals are just as horrified by what happened in Cleaveland as everyone else...
It is really alarming when we heard some news about children has been raped. I hope they will be able to pay for what they've done.
Neither of them deserved what happend to them.... But.... One was an adult/stripper that probably enjoyed it at first, but then it got out of control.
The other was still a child acting older to be cool. This case had more cause to send them to jail.... There were plenty of evidence surrounding it.
I believe the NY system needed to be harder on them.
They needed to do more research on the one in TX. Some of the boys turned themselves in, some ran and one even commited suicide.
Not long after all of this was over with(a yr or 2 later) the young girl
Had a child and then another.
Very intresting case. I found out about this a yr and a half ago when we moved to the area.
It's a sad situation all away around. This is not the only town this has happened in and it sure won't be the last.
Can't point fingers at one state over the other because of the way the law is handle or pull the race card.
Wrong is wrong.
Neither of them deserved what happend to them.... But.... One was an adult/stripper that probably enjoyed it at first, but then it got out of control.
The other was still a child acting older to be cool. This case had more cause to send them to jail.... There were plenty of evidence surrounding it.
I believe the NY system needed to be harder on them.
They needed to do more research on the one in TX. Some of the boys turned themselves in, some ran and one even commited suicide.
Not long after all of this was over with(a yr or 2 later) the young girl
Had a child and then another.
Very intresting case. I found out about this a yr and a half ago when we moved to the area.
It's a sad situation all away around. This is not the only town this has happened in and it sure won't be the last.
Can't point fingers at one state over the other because of the way the law is handle or pull the race card.
Wrong is wrong.
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