She and one of her brothers were with their father when he had his fatal car accident, and now this.

I wish her peace and healing.

Awful what happened to her and fuck the authorities who have covered this up.
I hope they get everything that's coming to them.

That was a difficult read. I am impressed with how strong she is. She shouldn't have been treated like this. It was not her fault.

Go Anonymous! Equality before the law is a critical aspect of democracy

I guess the admins have some amount of pity in their hearts.

It is quite sad that we have to rely on Anonymous to see that this incident is properly investigated.

But thank goodness an organization such as Anonymous exists.

Glad you're here! Go Anonymous +1,000,000!!! Totally agree with what you said. Mighty glad they're there. But it's a shame that they even have to be.

Harsh? Yep...without apology.

Can't imagine how hard that would be to write.

It isn't worth a ban for saying what I think should happen to Matt. Not some one year prison sentence, he should get what he really deserves.

Matt needs a long prison sentence and so does zach.

"Matt 1 Daisy 0" on the front.

What. The. Fuck.

I don't usually say this, but whoever wore that shirt needs an ass kicking.

judges, prosecutors and most importantly the cost to the perpetrators. She isn't even old enough to vote. I hope she writes a book and gets rich from it.

Also hope funds and a national voice/foundation emerge like happened with Polly Klaas' family and the child abduction evil. It will possibly go better with social media engaged.

and she's not exactly from an underprivileged background. Her mother is a vet. It's just that they were relative newcomers in town. It has far more to do with that.

teachers, school officials, law enforcement etc. that assume or make sure that nothing will be said, no action will be taken, no reputation other than the victim's will be affected, the perpetrators will just proceed on with their lives like nothing happened. That's privilege to me, and it's the way it has been and continues to be until a Daisy becomes unwilling to grant them this privilege...of silence and shame.

This is the ultimate extreme form of bullying...which has been ignited by social media, photos, videos, etc. Now hopefully this same medium will begin to stand up for the young, force their elders to take responsibility for our Rape Culture as it currently exists, and help the young...abused boys and girls Stand Their Ground.

Fuck that town for circling the wagons around a rapist, fuck that prosecutor for not doing their job, fuck the rape apologists who think she deserved it.

But most of all, fuck that arrogant entitled rapist and the piece of shit coconspirators who helped him rape a young woman and get away with it.

Other than that, I agree 100%.

Now lets go get those rapists.

To often the Victim gets put in the corner and we start to forget their is an actual person who was actually violated.

By standing up and saying her name she is letting them know, I AM NOT ASHAMED THAT YOU RAPED ME!!

I support her 100%!!!

It is sad that they only way to get just in some towns in the country it to shout from the bell tower so to speak.

"When I went to a dance competition I saw a girl there who was wearing a T-shirt she made. It read: 'Matt 1, Daisy 0.'"

Jesus fucking christ.

When a man and a woman (or a boy and a girl) have sex, he's taking something from her and she's giving it up. So when two people have sex, the man wins. When they don't have sex, the woman wins.

Duh. That's like, right in the Patriarchy Manual in Chapter 1.

There's a wide swath of people who view sex in this adversarial way. I was fortunate enough to have male friends in who steered me away form this mindset well before I had a girlfriend.

This is not the country I grew up in at all. Bullying has gone way beyond the pale. Look how they treat POTUS. We've gone south and I don't know for how long. But this is more than I can stomach

Hell, maybe even in larger communities.

I've seen it a million times. They close ranks around the favored ones, who are usually athletes (often, but not always, football players.) It happened at my suburban high school. Granted, nobody burned her house down, but still.

Everyone has stories like this, where some privileged person, be it an athlete or just some rich kid, gets a slap on the wrist for something they did. It might be as simple as passing a kid that doesn't deserve it because he's an athlete.

This IS the country we all grew up in. Time and time again, the 1% get a slap on the wrist. Everybody else gets thrown under the bus.

This really is NOT the country I grew up in.

I'm a 63 year old woman, former flower child, raised in the residential section of a large city (Philadelphia)

and I DO see a lot of differences in teen behavior from "my time" in the Sixties.

Yes, there was "bullying" (I was a victim) but NOT to this extent....I'm serious when I tell you that:

I went to a large high school -- my graduating class was 1700 and, one thing we NEVER heard about back then,

and I do NOT think it was just "hushed up" was Teen (and younger) Suicide...Seriously -- I'm sure SOME teenager

committed suicide somewhere, but there were NOWHERE near the numbers there are today.

From my perspective, and I HAVE lived a fairly long and NOT sheltered life, it seems to have started on a large scale in the Eighties....I

am still shocked when I read how many younger DUers here talk about ALL the people they knew who committed suicide -- I only know

ONE and she was an acquaintance, much older, in her late twenties, depressed over a divorce.

I don't know HOW to account for the differences, to be honest, except MAYBE the fact that

drugs in high school were not NEARLY so prevalent? -- It was a BFD if you smoked a joint

when I was in high school -- it was freaking DARING!

Maybe a sociologist could comment on this, and I don't want to get flamed here, but the overall feeling in America

back then seemed just, well happier...YES, we had the Vietnam War,

YES, we had the Assassinations, but honestly, the feeling still seemed way more hopeful -- even all those anti-war demonstrations

attest to the idea people believed things could get BETTER, and I'm not sure WHY or HOW so much has changed,

but to this Sixty Somethings Eyes, it definitely has -- I invite all Baby Boomer's to weight in on this, in terms of similar experience.

The victim in the Steubenville case has received death threats after the guilty verdict.

This has never been about the question of guilt or innocence. This has always been about spitting in the face of the victims for the sake of a football program. These people are utterly despicable. They defend the rapists! They are enemies of justice and decency and are totally lacking in empathy. They would have fit right in with the terror in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia.

Yet there are those who claim there is no rape culture (including perhaps a few DU members?). This is morally equivalent to those who say that we no longer need the Voting Rights Act because black Americans supposedly do not suffer discrimination anymore (which is a ludicrous position!).

There are those who claim there has been a decrease in rape of women and girls in this country. (Well, I'm sure that has given a lot of comfort to the victims in the Steubenville and Maryville cases! ) Oh, goody! I guess we can weaken laws against rape now!

If I hadn't felt so angry and nauseated, I would have wished to say it like you did.

Thank goodness Anonymous picked up on this and thank goodness Daisy is an exceptional kid!!!!



Too pissed at the twisted misogyny to say anything more.

I come from a family of intellectual women. My mother, who passed away decades ago, was a traditional housewife, as was expected of married women of her generation; but she had had a college education and was well-informed. As a young white teenager, she rejected Jim Crow before there was even a civil rights movement. As a college student my sister, who has always had a lot of empathy for people, did participate in the civil rights movement and was blacklisted by the Houston chapter of the John Birch Society. (My sister is too liberal to be a Communist. She even introduced me to The Confession by Artur London, who was a survivor of a Stalinist political show trial in Communist Czechoslovakia during the early 1950s.) What attracted me to my future wife even more than her physical beauty was her mind! She was so smart! In addition to being pretty, both of my daughters excelled academically in both high school and the university they attended. Both of them are better human beings than I was at their ages. They are two of the kindest human beings I've ever known. If most people were like them, we'd nearly have Utopia. I'm so proud of them I could almost cry!

So, no, I have no use for rape apologists and their ilk.

wow.

We never doubted you. Please stay well and take care of yourself.

the authorities who fucked this up put together.

As for the worthless POS that did this and the enablers in that town...

These sociopaths won't quit. She needs protection and stay off twitter. I take it no one was arresting for the arson to her home.

But what tears you up is how she says she has changed. I guess so. To have your neighbors torture you because you chose to report crimes against you. I read some of the tweets. I won't type them here they were so horrific.

So glad to see her fighting back. It might be what saves her emotionally. I read they are going to reopen the case. What a nightmare for her. Anonymous has gotten involved and help to change things. Where the hell we live anymore I don't know


http://rt.com/usa/maryville-missouri-rice-investigation-319/

It's become so brutish and ugly that I can't even get angry anymore. Sad, yes. Angry? There's no degree of anger short of insane, blood-spilling rage that could express it.

Still, if you really think all of this bullying of the victim and cheering-on of the perpetrator is new, I think you're wrong. This, folks, is the country we all grew up in. But in the old days, the people in power really could put a lid on it, and the victim really had no recourse but to shut up and move out of town. And social media may shine a light on this ugly part of American culture, but it is not going to effect any real change. As many people who are horrified by these acts of sexual terror, there will be an equal number who put on the T-shirt mocking the victim, who see to it that the victim's family is driven out of town.

Sadly, Daisy has found out at an early age what so many of us didn't find out until we were much older: people suck generally. Some worse and more frequently than others. Period.

And she's right about God: if there were one, why would it allow something like this to happen?

But it's possible to get over it. The scars will remain, but they'll fade. Daisy proves by her public outing of herself that she is strong. She will survive and thrive and, with any luck, the perps will do time and, who knows, maybe grow up to be actual men some day. I know a couple of people who, as children, suffered torments almost daily at the hands of abusive slime. They survived the horror, but it was a ferocious and long-term struggle. But, like Daisy, they were (and are) strong people.

Thanks

While I agree that shining a light on individual incidents will change nothing, the resulting discussions about the ways women are objectified will change things.

That may be the only way real justice exists in a lot of cases. I am really sick of a lot of things that happen in this country regarding justice and the lack of it in so many cases.

Daisy is wounded, but she is going to heal and go on. She proves this by being able to take this big step of coming forward with her side of the story. And she is a wonderful writer to boot. I hope her Mamma gets her far away from that small town in the middle of nowhere where she can continue and finish high school and go on to college.

To everyone else here... that small town is like thousands of other small towns in this country, found mostly in red states but sometimes in the blue ones too. They comprise the 47% that voted for Mitt Romney. The brain deads and rich wannabes. Little fiefdoms, with a pecking order. I call them bully-villes. And one thing they despise are newcomers to town. Especially newcomers with brains, and in this instance females with beauty and a mountain of inner strength. I'm sure there are many, many girls out there in bullivilles who have gone through the same thing, but are not as strong as Daisy and her Mother, and will suffer for the rest of their lives. Is there a national rape hotline established in this country, or state sponsored rape hotlines? If not, then that is what needs to be established. The number needs to be plastered on billboards, in school manuals, church bulletin boards, newspapers, PS ads on TV on a continuous spin. If I had children of age 9-10, I would make them memorize that hotline number, asking them over and over to recite the number back to me (at random times) before they left the house. Otherwise, what can be done to get at this massive horrid problem in this country???

what a gut retching story. gawd awful.

this is just beyond words. I wish I could hug this brave girl, and, more than that, I wish hugging her would make a difference in her life.

As my Italian grandmother used to say, on a daily-freaking-basis, "Corragio".

is why flame throwers were invented.

No one should have to go through something like this.

Also, if this is an example of midwest values, I'm happy I live on the East Coast.

They failed miserably in their sworn duties.

Maryville sounds like a total hell hole.

The rapists need to be locked up. No excuses. And it's a shame comments had to be disabled.

When we reported it to the police, they had me drive down to the hospital in the back of a police car!! I was examined by a doctor who acted like he wanted to get out of the room ASAP. After that lovely experience, I was interviewed by the police who asked, did I lead them on and just not want to take it all the way? The police told my step-father that they thought it was my fault. Honestly doesn't sound like things have improved very much. This was a large city in California. I can't imagine having to deal with a whole town knowing what I went through and protecting a rapist and threatening me. On top of feeling like I had my eyes ripped open to a reality that left me between a rock and a hard place. Vulnerable, unsafe and in PTSD. These people actually burned down their house. It's as if they burned her in effigy.
One of them, MB was arrested just a month prior for DWI, driving on the wrong side of the road.

The myth that their sex drive pushes them to force someone, rape, is a denial. Because all rapists find a way to minimize what they do, or assign blame to the victim. Explains why most of them are pathological, recidivists. They dehumanize and objectify. About 50% are impotent. Until we get men to stop spreading the rape myths, on the sly of course, we will have a rape culture. Because that form of informal socializing is passive acquiescence for that behavior.

I know it is never easy to speak of these experiences, but it is so important that people do.

And your are right. It is a myth. Rape is not about sex. It is about fragile egos trying to feel powerful. I'm a guy. Trust me. I know this type of male. They are beneath contempt ... unfit for the company of men, and certainly for the company of women.

Sail strong, lass.

Trav

<3

This is a problem because we live in a rape culture in which rape victims are routinely blamed for being raped, and rapists are routinely excused by any means necessary.

Thanks for the thread, cali.

Here's hoping the media and internet scrutiny will turn this around.

at the school, apparently. He is not on the roster. He is probably majoring in criminal law. One way or another. He also has been removed from the student directory. Rumour says he is out, one way or another.

The county sheriff could still use an earful, IMO.

The rapists in Maryville and their enablers did that, changing the course of the girls' lives, depriving them of a sense of security, belief in justice.

I think teen girls need to find a way to arm themselves against attacks, learn to fight back hard, and unfortunately, look at every party as an opportunity someone will take to rape them.

Justice is coming for the two responsible for these crimes. They will go to prison for their actions.

Prison will not be a pleasant place for them.

Uh huh.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2465458/Maryville-footballer-Matthew-Barnetts-mother-says-hes-victim.html