Anonymous Comes to Town: The hackers who took on high school sexual assault in Ohio

Greetings citizens of the world. We are

anonymous

. In mid-August 2012, a party was held in a small

town

in Ohio known as Steubenville. On this fateful night, a life changed forever when a group of Big Red High School football players began taking advantage of an underage girl. The girl was

sexual

ly

assault

ed, raped and dragged unconscious from party to party. The city of Steubenville has been able to keep this quiet and protect its star football team. You can't hide anymore. Now you will have the world looking directly at you. Op Roll Red Roll activated. I knew a rape case happened over the summer.

It just seemed to me that at that moment, when I heard all those things, they swept them under the rug. No one would talk about it for a while. And then all of a sudden a guy who's not even from the area shows up and says, 'I'm coming for you.' He has fainted, he is not well. It's wrong! As soon as Anonymous posted the video, I thought: I want to help. RollRedRoll.com is a Steubenville

high

school

football website hacked last night in connection with an alleged rape case in Jefferson County. In the video, the hacker group Anonymous threatens to reveal personal information about the people involved in the incident.

As far as I know, this was the first time something like this had happened in the city. It was a situation where you didn't really know what was going to happen, not knowing exactly what Anonymous represented. All you need is a Google search engine to realize that we take what we do seriously. Anonymous is nothing more than an idea that can be appropriated for a common cause. I don't think anyone really knew who Anonymous is. I could probably put on a mask and say I'm

anonymous

. There has never been a case like this in Steubenville. It's actually hard to get anyone in this area to talk about rape, and if they do, it's a little bit and then they say, "Okay, I've had enough, let's drop the topic and move on to something else." Young people today, and even when I was young, when you have a group of kids, boys and girls, and you put alcohol into the mix, things can get out of control.

People saw these photographs and it was horrible, they were ugly photographs and I understand that we need to correct that, but we are not bad people. I grew up within a 90 minute radius of Steubenville. I grew up in the Steubenville tri-state area. It wasn't until Anonymous was called at a local venue that I went. We just publish the information and then anyone can do whatever they see fit with that information. I was kind of the middle ground between Anonymous and Steubenville. It's like Spider-Man puts on his mask or something, you know, Superman puts on his costume, it's like, you're like... you're a superhero.

And Twitter this, Twitter that, direct messages, group conversations, private messages... It was a kind of civil war on social media. People went through their Twitter pages, pulled up old photos, old statuses, old tweets... Getting people from outside sources to hear the story. We can just blow it out of proportion, 'Hey, this girl was raped, what can we do to make this story huge?' So they organized a demonstration for a certain date. The first demonstration did not have much organization. People really sympathized and that's what happened for a few hours. I just remember seeing snowball fights.

I'm seeing that it's starting, but it needs to move forward, it basically needs production. At the time, they didn't release the 12-minute Nodianos video at the end and I knew that was coming. That will attract thousands of people and if it looks like that when they get there, it will be in the news for a day and that will be it. Once Nodi's video came out, all hell broke loose at that moment. Yes, she did. News Anchor: National controversy is now arising from a criminal case in a small

town

in Ohio. News Anchor: People were laughing and watching, taking pictures, posting pictures...

News Anchor: The story has now gained national attention and divided that community. It was kind of surreal to see CNN come into my backyard. At first I was very angry. It was a really negative thing to experience and honestly, since I invested my retirement here and then accumulated this. This huge negative publicity was not good. Okay, I don't like Anonymous, the way they came to our city and wreaked havoc. You take it off, brother. Take it off, take it off. And then Steubenville had its own demonstration. They say our city is divided. We must stay together and united.

They say we should be ashamed of wearing red and black. I say, wear it with pride. You want us to be ashamed of our tradition, you want us to be ashamed of our success, you want us to be ashamed of our children, you want our children to be ashamed of the

school

they go to. This case is in the legal system. Let them handle it! A lot of the comments, a lot of the nasty phone calls that I got, you know, I'm the boss of rape town, how do I let this go on, how do I let people get away with it?

I was worried, we didn't let anyone get away with it. We solved this case in the first two weeks. I think we're being held hostage by, you know, maybe 50/100 people. They're holding this entire city hostage. They are dictating our image, they don't even know it... The external perception is that people are nothing more than supporters of rape... These church-going people, we were all labeled as if we were monsters here. Everyone who lives here would like this story to stop appearing in the media so we can get over it, heal and move on. I have lived here about 40 years.

I was

sexual

ly

assault

ed. When I called the sheriff's office I said, 'I want to see if I can prosecute.' The response I got from the deputy I spoke to was, 'Oh, I know him and the prosecutor has decided that he will not take the case.' After that happened, I slept with a baseball bat, making sure the doors were locked at all times. I would go places he wouldn't normally be and there he would be. He was paranoid and couldn't depend on anyone else to take care of me. So I had to do it myself.

If the group Anonymous hadn't come in and brought national attention to this, I think it would have disappeared like so many others. These things happen all the time, but they have never been focused on our community. What happened with Jane Doe was somewhat different. I don't get involved in... I can't say the word... activist in anything. I didn't make it to the first rally. And then my sister-in-law informed me of all the tweets and all the photos and the video and I was like, "You've got to be kidding me." Then I went to the second rally.

Welcome to Steubenville, if you have something to say, come on up. I had no intention of going up there and talking, but as soon as I got there and saw these people talking, I just walked up those stairs. I wasn't even thinking, you know, Michelle, what are you doing? What are you doing? I just walked up those steps and the girl finished talking and I said, 'I want to talk.' I am 51 years old. I was sexually abused when I was eight years old. I never told anyone and finally, when I was 40, I decided to get help.

Once the testimony material started coming out, I felt like I was struck by lightning because now, in a way, it has almost become a women's movement. They just changed it. On the day of the demonstration, my husband told me: 'You won't go at all, it's too dangerous.' That morning I had decided that if my husband wasn't going to take care of me, he would just walk. I just felt like he needed to be there. My name is Alesha, I am a citizen of Steubenville, I was raped in 2000, I reported it to the police, they called me saying they couldn't do anything for me.

Some of the survivors who spoke out had not gotten justice and in some ways this was the first time they had spoken about what happened. My name is Megan. My name is Isabel. My name is Robyn, I was raped when I was seven years old. They raped me too, I never told anyone. It just made me feel like a new person. It's like I was released for some reason, it just… felt good. The city came together and everyone handed out masks and said, if you want to help, this is what you can do. I went to all the rallies, saw these women speak, and that was a turning point.

Well, as far as public shaming goes, it's tough, it's tough, but anything I can do, I'll do it and I hope that if anyone is thinking about doing something, something wrong, they give it some thought. . What would happen if someone found out? Something bad like that would happen then yes. I would like to see people come together, unite and support each other. Steel workers do it, when they're going to lose their jobs they go to Washington, coal miners just run away to Washington. Sometimes you have to let things die but, on the other hand, you don't want people to forget what happened.

The conversation should be about where we go from now on and not just where we are going but where the entire country is going. This is not an isolated case. Survivors are ready and prepared to be heard.