Today in Rape Culture

[Content Note: Rape culture; revictimization.]

The carelessness of this is unconscionable:
CNN, Fox News and MSNBC recently aired the name of the underage victim in the Steubenville rape trial during reports about the case.

Two high school football players were found guilty of raping a 16-year old girl in a controversial case in Steubenville, Ohio. The verdict was handed down on Sunday.

All three cable news networks aired a clip of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, apologizing to the victim in the courtroom. Mays had addressed the victim by name, which was not censored during CNN and MSNBC's broadcasts on Sunday and Fox News' broadcast on Monday. Local CBS affiliate WTRF also aired the clip without editing the victim's name out.

"I would truly like to apologize to [redacted], her family, my family and the community," Mays said. "No picture should have been sent around, let alone even taken."
It isn't enough that virtually every cable media outlet has at least one on-air personality engaging in brutal victim-blaming; they've got to broadcast the survivor's name to the world, too. Whoops.

And then rape apologists have the nerve to wonder aloud, suspiciously, if there are as many rapes as anti-rape advocates say, why so few of them are reported.

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