Hackers produce disturbing video evidence in Ohio gang rape case

KnightSec, a hacking group affiliated with the "Anonymous" collective, has released a video of teenager Michael Nodianos glorying in the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl by his high school football player teammates. According to the Atlantic Wire, hackers are intervening, putting now-scrubbed evidence back online because other teenagers and citizens of football-crazed Steubenville, Ohio are proving to be reluctant to help authorities prosecute a rape case against the town's teenage football stars.

"She is so raped right now," said Nodianos to the camera. "There won't be any foreplay for a dead girl. It ain't wet now, to be honest. Trust me, I'm a doctor."

He was referring to an incident in late August, when two players on Steubenville High School's prestigious football team, The Big Red, reportedly drugged a 16-year-old girl and sexually assaulted her, carrying her unconscious body by the wrists and ankles from party to party, urinating on her and abandoning her at the end of the night at her parents' house. The players, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond, are currently on house arrest in Steubenville after being remanded from the county juvenile detention center.

The boys glorified their crime online, shooting Instagram photos of the assault, making lewd updates on Facebook and Twitter, and allowing their friends, like Nodianos, to shoot photos and make their own updates and videos about the incident. In spite of the abduction and attack's high profile in social media, townspeople have been reluctant to aid the prosecution of the crime in any way, lest it jeopardize The Big Red's chances at another state championship.

Nate Hubbard, 27, a volunteer Big Red coach, went so far as to accuse the victim of making the whole thing up to excuse a night of excessive partying, "The rape was just an excuse, I think,” he told the New York Times.

"What else are you going to tell your parents when you come home drunk like that and after a night like that?" Hubbard asked. "She had to make up something. Now people are trying to blow up our football program because of it.”

A juvenile judge and a Steubenville county prosecutor have both had to recuse themselves from the case because of ties to the football team. Steubenville is a small town, the judge told the Times, "Everybody knows everybody."

With the investigation stymied, KnightSec created a WikiLeaks-style site called "Local Leaks," where it put on display a dossier about the so-called Steubenville "Rape Crew," including new information about team boosters and Big Red head coach Reno Saccoccia, as well as the video of Nodiano riffing on his friends' crime.

Wearing an Ohio Buckeyes T-shirt, Nodianos said the victim was "deader than a doornail."

"They pissed on her," he said, before launching into a list of famous people the teenage victim was "deader than," including "Caylee Anthony" and "OJ Simpson's wife," as well as "John F. Kennedy" and slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

The dossier published by KnightSec also revealed the intricate web of association between top Big Red players and staff and Steubenville's top brass. Coach Saccoccia regularly breakfasts with the county sheriff. One of the boys accused of suppressing the crime is the son of a county prosecutor.

Meanwhile, it will be difficult for the defense team to allege that no crime took place with Nodianos insisting in his video, "They raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team" and slapping his thigh and laughing when a teammate asks, "Is she going to feel it?" and responding, "No, she's dead!"

Watch the video, embedded via YouTube, below: