I think the worst offenders in this saga remain the high school that rallied around their guy. He served a 10-month sentence, then returned to play football his senior year. Their coach was testifying on behalf of their character. The guy who was sentenced with him, who was perhaps the primary perpetrator in the rape of this young girl, was playing football again for some college by 2015. /vomit
It's hard to make straightforward villains out of Bo or Youngstown State for this. I can understand this defense where "Hey, he's a student in good standing. What do you want us to keep him out of, and how?"
But man. We, as a society, have GOT to get past the treating of rape as the kind of error where one does one's time, pays dues, and gets on with their lives. No, no. They raped a fellow human being. The victims and not the perpetrators are the people around whom we should be rallying, and that's impossible in a world where we're selectively permitting or even cheering on the athletically gifted among the rapists to write their redemption stories -- schools, coaches, fans and athletic departments behind them.
The message here is simple. Women don't matter. Hurt them how you like, we'll find a program that will do great things for your development and some football coaches who will testify to your "humbleness". It's a brutal, perverse world. To change it, it's on us to change our attitudes about how acceptable is the status quo.
