Teens Who Sexually Assaulted Girl, Filmed It and Distributed It On DVD, Won't Serve Jail Time

Posted by Ann Bartow, Feminist Law Professors at 1:00 PM on November 7, 2007.

This post, written by Ann Bartow, originally appeared on Feminist Law Professors

Full story here. One quick excerpt:

A DVD of the attack - which was titled 'C**t the Movie' - was distributed throughout the community, the court heard.

The 16-year-old who filmed the DVD and the two youths - both 17 - who were involved in the sexual assault each received 18-month youth supervision orders and had convictions recorded against them.

A 16-year-old boy was the only youth to avoid a conviction and was placed on a 12-month probation order after the judge found he did not directly engage in the sexual or physical assaults and had good insight into his offending.

The judge said the victim had organised to meet two of the boys at a Werribee train station on the day of the attack and had no idea a group of at least 11 boys was meeting her there.

He said the girl sustained significant emotional and psychological trauma from the incident and this was compounded by the filming and distribution of the DVD.

I haven't seen the film and truly do not want to, but I wonder if the average porn consumer would recognize what was occurring or care about the coercive way that it was produced. The boys obviously realized that the girl was not going to participate voluntarily, but also thought that it was perfectly fine to force her, and then to distribute that DVD.

Tagged as: sexual assault, criminal justice, australia

Ann Bartow is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is a law professor at the University of South Carolina