STEUBENVILLE, OHIO—It was 1:38 in the morning on Aug. 14 when they came through the doors of the police station in this struggling, one-time steel town on the Ohio River.

They had driven 15 minutes through the dark from their home in nearby West Virginia — parents of an “all-American family,” in the words of their lawyer: hard working, middle class, with strong religious faith and two beautiful children.

But they were sick with worry and grief.

The tale they told explained why.

On the night of Aug. 11 and into the morning of Aug. 12, while attending a series of parties in town, their 16-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted, raped and possibly urinated on, they said.

The culprits, they claimed, were members of Steubenville High’s “Big Red” football team — local celebrities in this town of 18,500, where high-school football is played in a 10,000-seat stadium and broadcast on TV.

The parents came with evidence, including a flash drive with at least one photo that circulated on Instagram; copies of lurid posts about the incident that appeared on Twitter; and a 12-minute video in which a boy, clearly drunk, gives a shocking, post-incident commentary on the night’s events.

“They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson raped that one girl,” howls 18-year-old Michael Nodianos, a Big Red graduate who now attends Ohio State University and is a friend of the players.

His commentary was chilling.

Nodianos did not participate in the alleged attack, investigators determined. But court records from a pretrial hearing suggest he based his commentary on pictures and possibly video shared with him by those who had been there.

As Nodianos riffed, his off-camera companions laughed and snorted.

Unbeknownst to them, that video-commentary — which they posted on YouTube — would prove their undoing. With its names and details, police would use it as a guide to piece together the players and events of that night.

In the weeks and months since, this made-for-TV story of sport, booze and alleged sexual assault in small-town America — all of which later unfolded on the Internet — erupted into a national story.

Police contacted the victim, pored over materials, met the local prosecutor, obtained warrants and within 48 hours seized five cellphones — they would eventually take 15, as well as two iPads — and began interrogations.

Local parents hired lawyers for their children and witnesses fell silent.

Nevertheless, on Aug. 22, 16-year-old footballers Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond were taken from their beds at 1 a.m. and charged.

The arrests led the local newspaper’s Aug. 23rd front page. “Juveniles facing charges,” the Herald-Star’s banner headline read. “Pair being held in connection with an alleged sexual assault.”

The unidentified kids were referred to as “student athletes.”

But if anyone wondered who they were, they didn’t for long.

When fans filled the stadium the next day for Big Red’s home opener, Grade 10 students Mays and Richmond were not in the lineup.

Next week, a cavalcade of TV trucks with roof-mounted satellites will descend on this town for the trial. Mays and Richmond will be front and centre, playing for their lives on a national stage.

Where some see an isolated case of sexual assault — a profound tragedy if proven — others see a larger problem.

Numbers show that sexual violence — epidemic in U.S. colleges, where a national study found one in five women experience rape or attempted rape during their college years — has put down roots in the nation’s high schools.

It is a problem serious enough for U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to have raised it from a public podium in April 2011.

Duncan told a New Hampshire audience that there are 4,800 counts of sexual assaults, rapes and attempted rapes in high schools each year. And those numbers, Duncan stressed, are low, “because we all know sexual assault is a notoriously under-reported crime.”

In fact, studies show 80 per cent of U.S. rape victims do not report the crime to police.

In Canada it might be worse: a 1990s study showed that more than 90 per cent of female sexual assault victims declined to report their victimization.

Dr. Janice Du Mont, a scientist at Toronto’s Women’s College Research Institute, says Canada’s 22,000 reported sexual assaults annually are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Why don’t women report? Women’s health advocates say the reasons are complex, but one is key: victims do not trust authorities to take them seriously.

In 2011 the Obama administration took aim at that problem, issuing new guidelines detailing how colleges and schools must investigate all allegations of sexual assault.

The stronger guidelines appear to have been spurred by a 2010 scandal at the University of Notre Dame, in which 19-year-old freshman Elizabeth Seeberg committed suicide 10 days after she told campus police she had been sexually assaulted by a Notre Dame football player.

Campus police did not interview the player until after Seeberg died.

“Messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea,” a friend of the accused emailed Seeberg before she died, an email viewed by the National Catholic Reporter.

Later, in a closed-door hearing, the university cleared the player of wrongdoing. His name was never revealed. He did not miss a single game. But the college had to embrace new guidelines.

It is not just Notre Dame and it’s not just college, says Kathy Redmond of the Denver-based National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, which aims to end off-field violence through education and counselling.

“We’re seeing a trend of high-school athletes following the bad behaviour of both their college and professional counterparts.”

The exact extent of the problem at the high-school level is difficult to quantify, but Redmond has counselled on “case after case” involving high-school athletes. Perhaps the most egregious was in Catawissa, Pa., in which a 16-year-old football player was convicted of sexually assaulting a female student then permitted back to class — and the football team — after serving time.

She is now suing the school board under federal laws in which school boards can be held accountable for out-of-control youths.

In small town America, where high-school sports are a unifying force for the community — and players are celebrated as heroes — towns identify with the players, Redmond says, and players feel a sense of “entitlement.”

“And in a place like Steubenville, where football rules, that’s elevated.

“Put all those things together and you have a perfect storm.”

It had been threatening rain that day in August. But the “perfect storm” would not come until after dark.

Big Red had just won a pre-season game and the team was pumped about aiming for the state championship. The team hadn’t won since 2006, when it completed back-to-back championships with two 15-0 seasons.

No football team in Ohio history had ever done that, high school or college.

The team has been playing for more than 100 years. Big Red graduate Calvin Jones was the first African-American to make it on the cover of Sports Illustrated, even before baseball’s Jackie Robinson. Jones would later play for Winnipeg in the Canadian Football League, dying tragically in a 1956 plane crash en route to Calgary.

Today, the road that leads to Big Red’s Harding Stadium is called Calvin Jones Way.

With Big Red’s season opener two weeks away, anticipation was building.

But now — it was time to party.

“Party at jake howarths!!! Huge party!!! Banger!!!” Trent Mays messaged followers on Twitter.

Many gathered at star wrestler Jake Howarth’s house around 9 p.m., but a lot made their way to student Kamy Belardine’s around 10. There were 30 to 50 — many of them teenagers — equipped with music, iPhones and booze.

The 16-year-old girl from a nearby town in West Virginia, a friend of quarterback Mays, was soon drunk and a target of taunts.

As the party grew raucous, Kamy’s brother, Matt Belardine — an assistant coach at Big Red — came in, said things were “out of hand” and kicked everyone out, football player Mark Cole told an October pretrial hearing.

Cole, Mays, Richmond and fellow player Evan Westlakepiled into Cole’s 1999 Volkswagen Jetta, along with the girl, and headed back to Howarth’s.

When they arrived, the girl was carried, stumbling, into Howarth’s basement. There, she threw up and passed out.

At least nine boys and four girls were present, including the unconscious girl.

Ten to 15 minutes later, Howarth’s mother came downstairs and said those not staying the night had to leave. Mays and Richmond took the unconscious girl by her hands and legs and carried her out, sack-like, 18-year-old wrestler Anthony Craig said under oath.

Cole handed his keys to Westlake, who took the wheel. Richmond sat up front, and the girl, Mays and Cole wedged into the back.

Halfway into the 15-minute drive to Cole’s, the boys in the back began giggling.

Mays “inserted his fingers into her vagina,” Cole testified and, as he did, Cole pulled out his cellphone and made a video.

At Cole’s — where no parent was home — they carried the girl into the basement. Now there were four boys: Mays, Richmond, Cole and Westlake.

Then a fifth, wrestler Craig, came to pick up Westlake to drive him back to Howarth’s.

When Craig arrived, Cole showed him about “10 seconds” of his back-seat video, then they proceeded downstairs to the basement.

There, they said, they saw Mays and Richmond on the floor with the girl — who was now naked and motionless. Richmond and Mays were touching her.

Westlake told the court, “I was stunned at what I saw. I just wanted — I wanted to get out of there and I — I — I didn’t know what to do.”

Craig took a photograph.

Why, the prosecutor asked.

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Craig said he intended to show it to the girl the next morning because she wouldn’t have any idea what had happened — “because I knew it was wrong.”

But when he got back to Howarth’s, he showed it instead to “two or three people,” and then deleted it, he said.

Cole, too, testified he deleted his back-seat video the next morning.

But the still photo would live on, described in detail by Nodianos in his video-commentary.

Nodianos also went further, posting on Twitter: “Song of the night is definitely Rape Me by Nirvana.”

Prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter told the court the accused boys knew the girl was drunk, “and they kept going. She was a toy to them that night.”

Judge Thomas Lipps ruled the state had enough to proceed to trial.

Beleaguered Steubenville police Chief Bill McCafferty is ensconced in his office, steps from the courthouse.

“I knew it would be controversial,” he says. “I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

In mainstream media, the story was first contained to the Ohio Valley.

But on Sept. 2, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the state’s biggest daily, published a piece headlined, “Rape charges against high school players divide football town of Steubenville, Ohio,” and the story spread.

From the get-go, McCafferty appealed on TV for witnesses to come forward, without success.

Then, just days before the October pretrial hearing, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine appeared to worry he might not have enough evidence. He gave prosecutors the green light to persuade Cole, Craig and Westlake to testify — stopping short of offering immunity.

Their evidence proved crucial in securing a trial date.

Meanwhile, 45-year-old Alexandria Goddard, a former Steubenville resident, had been blogging up a storm. The Columbus-based blogger questioned whether justice could be done in a town so worshipful of its football team.

There were complicating factors: local prosecutor Jane Hanlin had a son on the team. Once arrests were made, Hanlin recused herself and the attorney general appointed a new prosecutor.

The original judge also knew parents of the players. He, too, recused himself and Judge Lipps of Cincinnati was appointed.

But Goddard and others asked why more people weren’t charged? What about those who stood by and did nothing?

This week Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said he hasn’t ruled out additional charges and will make an announcement following the trial.

Goddard chased down the sensational Internet postings from the night of the incident and re-posted them. Public fury followed.

Hundreds took to the streets demanding justice.

Then, in early January, the hacktivist Internet group Anonymous tracked down and re-posted the Nodianos’ video-commentary, which had been taken down from YouTube after the arrests.

More than 1,000 people then demonstrated and charges of a coverup filled the air.

With the resurfaced video, American TV networks had the images they needed. And the story exploded.

“That’s what really ignited this powder keg,” says McCafferty, a 24-year police veteran.

A local boy, McCafferty has seen a lot in his time. Steubenville has shrunk from a historic high of 44,000 in the 1960s to just 18,500; his staff has gone from 50 to 38; and heroin, he says, has made “a huge comeback.”

He insists there has never been a coverup; that police did a proper job; and next week’s trial will show that.

“Who would risk their career for a high-school football team?” he asks. “I do not watch the games. I do not know who plays. I don’t care.

“Nobody in Steubenville likes what happened. . . . Nobody in this city supports what happened. Everyone is appalled by the video. (But) it could have happened anywhere.”

During the interview, his cellphone rings. The ringtone is familiar: it’s The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Local businessman, booster and Big Red graduate Jerry Barilla, 72, says emails poured in from all across America: “We will not come to your city,” “Your city supports rape,” “All the football team should be arrested.”

“We are totally sympathetic toward the girl who was involved in this incident,” he says, seated in his downtown appliance shop. But he says “a cloud” has settled over the entire town.

Grassroots plans to revitalize a blighted downtown and attract new industry seem at risk now. Everything seemed fine at Steubenville’s Christmas parade on Dec. 8.

“Then all at once, this thing explodes. . . The video really set it off.”

In Akron, Ma’Lik Richmond’s lawyer, Walter Madison, says his “honour roll” client, “has seen more adversity in his 16 years than most face in a lifetime.”

During Richmond’s childhood his uncle was murdered, another was jailed for murder, his father was sent to prison for attempted murder and his mother suffered a nervous breakdown.

His mother allowed a local schoolteacher and her husband to act as guardians, and Richmond’s life changed.

He is exceptional at football and basketball, and some hope that will win him a college education.

Madison will not discuss the details of the case.

But he points to several other seemingly “slam-dunk” cases, including the 2006 Duke lacrosse scandal, where an accusation of rape was made against three athletes and later proved false.

“You have all these” high-profile cases in which guilty verdicts seemed certain. “But, as it turns out, it just wasn’t what we thought it was.”

“The presumption of innocence is not just a slogan,” he adds. He prefers the 16-year-old girl not be called “a victim,” but an “accuser.”

“Victim” or “accuser,” the 16-year-old girl has returned to school in her town across the river.

“She’s a strong little girl,” her lawyer Bob Fitzsimmons says. “But she has her moments. . . . She cries. Her mom cries. Dad cries all the time.”

Fitzsimmons is a West Virginia lawyer with a national reputation. He successfully sued the NFL on behalf of the late Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Webster, winning a $2-million payout — the only disability case the NFL has ever lost.

Fitzsimmons will advise the family. The state will prosecute. And Lipps will rule without a jury.

The victim’s family takes strength from messages and money from all across America. They have given all the cash to local sexual assault help centres.

“Everybody is so quick to convict everybody involved — the males involved — let me put it that way,” regional talk show host David Blomquist told his listeners not long after the arrests.

“Nobody wants to look at the female’s role, the culpability in any of this, to make sure without a doubt that a rape did occur.”

On a cold winter day, the wind howls through Harding Stadium, its end zones emblazoned with mammoth Big Red insignia. Across town, Barilla is warm in his shop, but anxious.

He hopes everyone can live with the decision, whatever it is. But he worries about what happens if the two are deemed innocent due to “insufficient evidence.”

If that’s the case, “I just don’t know what will happen.”

Bill Schiller’s last story for World Weekly was on Nelson Mandela.

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