Does Live-Streaming a Rape Make You a Rapist?

When Raymond Gates met Marina Lonina and her friend at a local mall in Columbus, Ohio, the 29-year-old purchased the two teens vodka and suggested they meet the next day. At some point during that subsequent February 27 rendezvous, the man allegedly held Lonina's friend down and raped her on a bed. And for reasons that fall at the center of a bizarre legal battle playing out in America's heartland, Lonina, who is 18, pulled out her phone and proceeded to live-stream the incident on Periscope rather than call 9-1-1. Last week, Gates was charged with kidnapping, rape, sexual battery and pandering sexual matter involving a minor. But in a seemingly strange twist, so was Lonina. Both pleaded not guilty Friday in the latest American saga pitting law enforcement against teens apparently social-media obsessed teenagers. In this case, prosecutors are suggesting a possibly drunk witness is just as culpable for rape as the actual, alleged sexual assailant.

"She got caught up in the likes," Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien told the local press.

It used to be that when teens were accused of trying to achieve a measure of celebrity through video stunts, they erred on the side of the reckless and goofy rather than downright malicious. For instance, a smattering of kids in the early aughts lit themselves on fire for a taste of Jackass-style glory. As recently as August 2014, rumors swirled that young people were self-immolating as part of a so-called Fire Challenge. But this attention-seeking behavior took a darker twist that same month, when an NYU student lit his classmate on fire and recorded the act on Snapchat. And just a few weeks ago, a veritable mob of teens and their parents went after a high school student in what a local sheriff called a blatant attempt to achieve viral infamy.

Judith Edersheim, co-director of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Harvard University, says there might be something to the idea that kids will commit crimes for "likes" and internet comments. She explains how teens "have a tremendously potent response to peers on a neurological level," and that, "compared to adults, their responses to other people's opinions of them are primed to be much more sensitive."

Furthermore, the professor has a pretty good idea why the 18-year-old videographer is being charged with the same crimes as the alleged rapist. To crib from Edersheim's explanation: If one person ended up killing the target during a robbery gone wrong, the getaway driver would still be charged with murder even though he or she didn't pull the trigger. "If someone is on the scene, the question becomes, what's the meaning behind their presence," she says of the Periscope case. "Were they complicit? Or part of it? Or resisting? If someone is participating, they'll be charged with whatever happens next."

Ultimately, whether or not Lonina gets convicted will likely depend on whether the defense can successfully argue she was at the crime scene under duress—or that she was merely trying to document the crime by posting it on Periscope, as her attorney has claimed. "There are so many things about the case that are disturbing," says Kristen Houser, the chief public affairs officer at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. "If people are thinking that social media is where you do everything, and that we've abandoned things like calling 9-1-1, that's a little startling. Technology seems to move faster than our ability to respond to it." One thing that complicates the defense offered by Lonina's attorney, though, is that the young woman, who had a tendency to post on Periscope all the time, had photographed her (minor) friend nude the day prior to the assault. She was charged with two counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented material or performance, according to a press release from the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, which means she's technically accused of more crimes than Gates.

"For the most part she is just streaming it on the Periscope app and giggling and laughing," O'Brien told the New York Times. He also said that the victim can be heard crying for help during the ten-minute video, and that at one point Lonina pulled on her leg.

Edersheim says a judge will likely make a gatekeeping determination in the rape case to decide if an expert witness will describe the relatively new technology to the jury. Representatives from the streaming service, which was launched in March 2015, did not return requests for comment.

"Technology has moved us into an area that is sometimes beyond belief," Prosecutor O'Brien told CBS.

If nothing else, the two defendants' bonds seem to capture their varied levels of culpability. Lonina's was set $125,000 [€110,000 EUR], and she has been released on bail, according to a spokesperson at the Franklin County Sheriff's Department. Meanwhile, Gates is still incarcerated on $300,000 [€263,500 EUR] bond. They each face more than 40 years in prison if convicted.

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