Spring Break has never struck us as the most civilised of occasions, but we get that relaxing before finals loom is perfectly acceptable; besides, boozing on the beach to music really shouldn't be sinister. However, a massive big line has to be drawn right now because we’re pretty sure that no-one’s fun should ever extend to hundreds of people looking on and failing to intervene as an unconscious woman is gang-raped. Because that's what happened to a 19-year-old woman at Spinnaker Beach Resort in Panama City Beach in Florida.
Police had been investigating an unrelated case of a shooting in Troy, Alabama, when they uncovered mobile phone footage showing the incident. The video shows, Panama City News Herald reports, an incapacitated young woman on a beach chair surrounded by several men. She tries to remove their hands from her genital region and the men can be heard saying things like ‘she isn’t going to know.’
Police now managed to identify some suspects, arresting two Troy University students, Ryan Calhoun, 23, and Delonte Martistee, 22, who've now been charged with sexual battery by multiple perpetrators.
The woman had told deputies she thought she’d been drugged before the incident and was scared of reporting it as she felt she didn’t remember enough details for it to matter.
However, in a sick twist, her report is that much more trusted and believed because there’s mobile phone footage of her. It’s great that that this means that the victim will definitely be believed, but it’s a great shame witnesses couldn’t intervene in other ways and it's doubly shaming the extent of 'proof' needed to believe a woman's word.
Sheriff Frank McKeithen said the incident was like ‘wild animals preying on a carcass laying in the woods’ and said the video was the ‘most disgusting, sickening thing’ he’s ever seen.
‘Within 10 feet from where this is happening there are hundreds, hundreds of people standing there watching, looking, seeing, hearing what is going on, and yet our culture and our society and our young people have got to the point where obviously this is acceptable somewhere, but I will tell you it is not acceptable in Bay County.’
He added: ‘They are more concerned about spilling their beer than somebody being raped’
Sheriff McKeithen is said to be bringing in stricter laws about beach drinking, underage drinking and drug control in order to rid the city of the grosser sides of Spring Break, but um, none of those things should have anything to do with rape. Let’s hope all the officials get to the actual root of this problem so they can stamp it out once and for all.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.