In horrific news today, a 16-year-old girl has been the victim of an ongoing social media campaign to humiliate her after her alleged rape.
Jada, a Texan teenager who has only been identified by her first name, says that she was out at a friend of a friend’s house party and fell unconscious after being given a drink handed to her by the host, a teenage boy. She had no idea of what happened next, but she believes she was raped.
In circumstances echoing that of the Steubenville rape case, where a girl, passed out drunk, was taken from party to party and sexually assaulted by football players while onlookers took photos that were later shared around, Jada was photographed seemingly passed out on the floor.
As well as these photos being shared around her school and on social media like Twitter and Instagram, one teen started a new game with the photos. And more followed. Borrowing from the times when celebrities doing/wearing something on the red carpet at awards ceremonies, trolls started up a #jadapose hashtag, posting photos of themselves in various states of undress, passed out on the floor, imitating her ‘pose’ as she lay passed out after the alleged rape.
It’s a bit like when Jennifer Lawrence’s Grecian Golden Globes dress spurred a #lawrencing trend on Twitter and Instagram. But about an underage girl who, as far as they might know, has just been raped.
When the boy who created the hashtag was asked why he did it, he told Houston Press he was ‘bored’ at 1am and ‘decided to wake up’ his Twitter timeline. Refusing to be identified, he said he didn’t know Jada personally.
Luckily, for all the darkeness flying around, social media has since flipped and there is a meme getting more pickup than the original photo, or any of the #jadapose images. It describes what happens, then sums up how horrible the story is. ‘Rape isn’t funny. So why is it that rape victims continue to be publicly mocked all over the country?’ it reads.
Small print at the bottom of the meme says, ‘See also: Steubenville, Daisy Coleman, Rachel Bradshaw-Bean. Vanderbilt Uni rape, Norwood hazing,’ which are all other incidences where a victim of rape or sexual assault has been used as a laughing stock for a local – or not so local, when social media comes into it – community. All of these occurrences have happened in the past five years, and show what can happen when sexual assault and rape are combined with social media.
As well as stemming the tide of social media posts designed to humiliate Jada, progress comes in the form of her going to police. She also appeared on TV, bravely saying she won’t be painted as a victim. ‘There’s no point in hiding, everybody has already seen my face and my body, but that’s not what I am and who I am.’
She waived her anonymity to speak to KHOU News about the incident, but her mum remained anonymous in her interview with the broadcaster. Jada is now awaiting the results of a police investigation into the incident. Hopefully, this investigation won’t only take into account the original alleged rape but the fact there are naked photos of Jada, taken without her permission (remember, she’s underage, too) doing the rounds on the internet. It’s not equally indictable, but at our last count, disseminating child porn is illegal. If a boy in Virginia can face jail time for taking a photo of his own dick, these Texan dicks should surely get in trouble for publishing a photo of this girl in such a vulnerable state?
** Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson**
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.