America
Video-recorded gang rape on crowded US beach: 2 students arrested
New York April 13
No one intervened or
reported to the police while a woman was being gang-raped like "wild
animals preying" in broad daylight on a crowded public beach in Florida,
a local official was quoted as saying.
Now, about a month after
the assault, two college students have been arrested in neighbouring
Alabama state and charged in the incident. Authorities said they were
looking for a third person seen in the video that authorities stumbled
upon during a separate shooting investigation.
"This is happening
in broad daylight with hundreds of people seeing and hearing what is
happening, and they are more concerned about spilling their beer than
somebody being raped," Sheriff Frank McKeithen said over the weekend
while announcing the arrest at a press conference posted on Facebook.
As
of Sunday, there have been no public protests in the US or editorials
in major media over the incident that took place around March 10 in
Panama City in Florida state during the mid-semester Spring college
holidays.
The incident involving college students puts renewed
focus on rampant sex assaults on college campuses across the US. "One in
five women is sexually assaulted in college," a White House Task Force
report said last year.
In the Florida incident, McKeithen said
that police in Troy, Alabama, alerted them on April 2 after they came
across the video of the gang rape while investigating a shooting
incident. Florida authorities then tracked down the victim, who told
them that she had been drugged, and carried out the investigation that
led to the arrests.
The victim not reporting the rape is not
unusual in the US. "Most often", the White House Task Force report said,
the victim "does not report what happened. Many survivors are left
feeling isolated, ashamed or (they are) to blame".
The local newspaper, Panama City News Herald, reported that there were several such incidents.
Bay
County Sheriff's Office, which has jurisdiction over the area "has
gotten leads on other sexual batteries on the beach in broad daylight
this year by following social media", the newspaper said. "In one video,
a crowd pours beer on a girl who appears to be incapacitated while a
male performs oral sex on her." That incident did not draw the attention
or the reaction of the national US or international media.