STEUBENVILLE, Ohio – In the early morning hours of August 12, 2012, Evan Westlake served as designated driver for three of his Steubenville High football teammates and one 16-year-old West Virginia girl he believed to be highly intoxicated.

He thought he'd done well by getting them all safely to the home of Mark Cole, one of his Big Red teammates. As Westlake was heading out, he walked into the living area of the basement and witnessed what should've been considered a rather troubling scene.

The girl was completely naked on the floor, laying motionless on her side, not far from where she'd just puked out of the side of her mouth.

By her side was one of his teammates, Trent Mays, who Westlake testified was fully exposed and smacking his penis on the girl's hip. Laying behind her was another player, Ma'lik Richmond, whom Westlake testified he saw penetrating the girl with two fingers, "halfway to the knuckle."

"It wasn't what I expected to see," Westlake testified Friday at the Jefferson County Justice Center here in this old Eastern Ohio mill town, where Mays and Richmond stand trial for rape. "I wasn't really sure what to think."

Why didn't you stop it, special prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter asked?

"Well," Westlake said, "it wasn't violent. I didn't know exactly what rape was. I always pictured it as forcing yourself on someone."

Let's ignore the obvious point that you don't need to "force" yourself on a girl who is incapacitated by alcohol. Instead, let's simply ask what did Evan Westlake do?

"I said my goodbyes," he testified.

Goodbyes? And what exactly was the response from Mays and Richmond after having someone walk in on them in the middle of that moment – even if, as the defense is arguing, it actually was consensual?

"They said, 'I'll see you Monday at football,' " Westlake said.

See you Monday at football?









That bit of scene reconstruction from the witness stand is but one of about a million dumbfounding moments in this closely-followed trial. Mays, 17, and Richmond, 16, are being charged as juveniles for raping the girl after a night of partying last summer.

If convicted both face imprisonment until age 21. Each has maintained their innocence as the trial, now in its third long day, stretches into the weekend.

As much as the alleged wicked deeds of the two boys is on trial, so is the culture of a pack of Steubenville teens, most of whom are members of the economically-depressed city's powerhouse Big Red football team. For years, critics of the program have said players were able to act without concern for laws or decency, and it's that sense of entitlement that led things like the casualness of what Evan Westlake witnessed in Mark Cole's basement.

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It's clear from testimony that this group of friends ran around at all hours of the night with little to no parental supervision, and they at least believed that legendary football coach Reno Saccoccia was capable of helping them get out of trouble. Saccoccia told the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Friday he expects to testify at the trial.

Walter Madigan, the defense attorney for Richmond, argued Thursday that the nonchalant way the defendants said good bye to Westlake in that basement suggests that they didn't think they were engaged in any wrongdoing, and thus that this was, indeed, consensual sex.

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