Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, were found to be adjudicated delinquents. The equivalent in the Ohio juvenile justice system of being found guilty of raping a 16 year old girl after a night of drinking in August, 2012. The verdict may end the trial but the impact on the residents of Steubenville will be felt for some time to come. In a bizarre story with a cast of characters that includes the New York Times, a fugitive anarchist and Roseanne Barr, massive media malpractice led to the Ohio town being terrorized in real life by elements of the hackivist group Anonymous.
...
...
The main sources for many of these stories is a site called LocalLeaks run by FBI fugitive and infamous Anonymous hacker Christopher Doyon, who uses the handle Commander X. In this video interview on Democracy Now!, Doyon claimed public credit for the LocalLeaks site. Despite being full of undocumented and bizarre claims, unverified rumors and poorly written falsehoods, most media sources freely linked to the site and helped the the story go viral in early January. For example, CNN put the website’s URL up on the screen repeatedly during video segments on the story essentially giving a site run by a criminal hacker hundreds of thousands of dollars in free advertising and giving credibility to the site.
The result, says Bruzzese, was ‘hundreds of threats’ against Steubenville residents over the past several months. He estimates over fifty law enforcement officers from various agencies were at work in Steubenville this past week providing protection and tracking threats that included firebombing the home of the prosecutor. At one point in January, Steubenville schools were put on lockdown and people wearing Guy Fawkes masks were going door-to-door looking for Big Red’s football coach.
It was a remarkable and frightening example of how Anonymous can have devastating impact beyond the computer screen and in real life. Steubenville was under siege as websites and voicemails were hacked and townspeople faced a wave of protests, threats and harassment. At one point, a demonstration of about a thousand mask-wearing protestors invaded Steubenville, ginned up over the false story spread by Anonymous and the media.
...
...