Horrifying High School Rape Case Shows How Alcohol Is Still A Scapegoat For Men's Actions

In a new reported instance of high school sexual assault that already has drawn comparisons to the Steubenville rape case, three star athletes at Calhoun High School in Georgia have been indicted for the sexual assault of a fellow 18-year-old senior.

The attack was said to have taken place in a crowded cabin during the middle of party celebrating the school's prom night.

With charges filed against three of the perpetrators, gruesome details emerged from that night just a few weeks ago.

Apparently during the party, four male students brought an obviously-inebriated, passed out senior woman into a room of the cabin, and stuck foreign objects into her vagina against her will — so forcefully that it caused "substantial" tearing, according to the police department.

The student said she couldn't remember who assaulted her, but that others at the party knew what was going on: The fourth male student, for example, was simply present in the room to barricade the door shut.

As authorities were investigating in the aftermath of the May 11 attack, many of the school's students who knew about the assault were obviously incensed that the police seemed to be moving slowly against these star student athletes.

Some Calhoun students even began posting to Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #standforHER to show their support for the victim.

Last week, the Gilman County Police announced that they finally had enough evidence to arrest football quarterback Fields Chapman, wide receiver Andrew Haynes and star baseball player Avery Johnson on aggravated sexual battery charges. They're also looking into charging the other students at the party who were drinking and knew of the assault, but did nothing.

While it was expected that police would move quickly to bring this young woman justice (although the same couldn't be said in the Steubenville case), this assault has shown one of the many negative ways that the media often deflects blame from the perpetrators.

In a local news account of the prom night party, one anchor said the girl "ended up" in the room with the four men like she had somehow willfully entered into this situation.

And so far, there's been an unnecessary emphasis on the fact that these men were drinking, as if that influenced their decision to rape a fellow student with foreign objects or was the primary reason they acted so brutally and out of line.

H/T: Jezebel