They were drinking at Gates’s home in Columbus on Feb. 27 when he began to sexually assault the 17-year-old and Lonina began live-streaming the violence using Periscope.
Reportedly, Marina Lonina, a friend of the girl being sexually assaulted in front of her, has been caught up with getting "Likes" on the variant of social media (Periscope - whatever that may be). So caught up, in fact, that it seems like she is "in the habit of filming everything with this app."
They were drinking at Gates’s home in Columbus on Feb. 27 when he began to sexually assault the 17-year-old and Lonina began live-streaming the violence using Periscope...
Reportedly, this Lonina was asking followers on social media what she should do next. Her attorney stated: “She’s a good kid... [s]he’s a senior in high school. Comes from a fine family and is the furthest thing from a rapist. … The rapist was in court and it was not my client.”
[Everything I say following is hypothetical as regards the facts, as nothing has yet been proven in court.]
Mr. Attorney, your client is not a "good kid," by any normal definition. She was a knowing underage drinker who had a phone in hand and chose to broadcast a rape live on social media. Let's consider part of that sentence again: broadcast a rape live on social media.
She is, not, in fact, the furthest thing from a rapist. She was right next to the rapist, literally. She is an aiding and abetting spectator and amateur pornographer. She could have called the police. She could have called the ambulance. Instead, "authorities became aware of the incident when a friend of the victim saw the images and alerted police."
The [teenage victim] can be heard screaming, “No, it hurts so much,” “Please stop” and “Please, no” multiple times.
I cannot imagine how betrayed and alone the victim felt with someone who was purportedly her friend standing by and doing nothing to help. Nothing and making a spectator sport of her misery.
If my daughter did something like this on social media, I am not sure I would be able to look at her easily again. I would also likely have to spend weeks...months...wondering where I went wrong.
But I can hazard a guess.
I understand, in many ways, the lure of social media, especially for the lonely or socially awkward. I also understand that anyone can succumb to the lure to getting "likes" for things they say or actions they take. Unlike many things "in real life," the internet is such a vast meeting space and simultaneously personal and anonymous, that it is very easy to find a community that will "like" virtually anything you do, with very little personal effort.
Like the Ring of Gyges, the internet permits you to semi-anonymously explore the darkest sides of human nature (which Solzhenitsyn was well familiar with) and to find those who will pander and encourage that dark side. This is not likely to have been the first time this woman posted something on social media - it is only the most extreme example that happened to catch the public eye. I have extremely restrictive monitors on my home wireless with my children, and I am constantly looking into their devices to see what they are doing. No parents with a child at home should ever assume that the exterior person they see day-to-day, who is a "good kid," is being the same on the internet. The drug addict or alcoholic may seem, during the day, to be fine and dandy. But place them in the midst of their trials, and the night of "as different as night and day" appears.
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