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Ma’lik Richmond, convicted in Steubenville rape case, returns to football team

Rainman05

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Ma’lik Richmond, convicted in Steubenville rape case, returns to football team
A senior, Richmond practiced with the team on Monday. Jefferson (Ohio) County's chief probation officer Fred Abdalla Jr. told WTRF-TV that there's no law keeping the 18-year-old from playing.

Ma

Ma’lik Richmond is back on the Steubenville HS football team.

Richmond, one of the two teens convicted in the explosive rape case in city along the Ohio River, practiced with the team on Monday as a wide receiver.
Richmond and quarterback Trent Mays were convicted in the case involving the rape of a 16-year-old girl at a August 2012 party. Richmond served nine months in a juvenile detention facility before being released in January. Mays is still serving a two-year sentence.

“There’s no law against it that states he can’t play. There’s no OSHA rules that they’d be violating,” Fred Abdalla Jr., Jefferson County’s chief probation officer told WTRF

usa-crime-ohio.jpg


^Picture from the editorial.


How disgusting. You can get kicked off a team for indecent behavior or smoking pot but rape, no, that's fine. You can play on the team after being a convicted felon. And btw, just 9 months? Granted, the other guy does 2 years but just 9 months for rape? What the hell is this? I get that it's juvenile detention center but I'd imagine there would be a pretty severe sentence for such a crime. 9 months is pathetic for such a crime. You think that girl can get over the fact that she was raped in 9 months? Not even adding the fact that she got bullied after school and online. Well, do you? Do you think 9 months is enough time to get over being raped?

College football or highschool football seems to be the refuge of the scoundrels and they get off easy because it's "prestigious" for the schools. Bah, it's pathetic.

Again, it's not the sentence of 9 months... 9 months... jesus christ... it's not that small sentence that is bothering me the most atm, it bothered me a year ago when it was given, what angers me to no end is the fact that he was allowed to return to the same school and back on the team.

if I were a father in that school and I had my daughter going there, I'd pull her out and transfer her to any other school and encourage every other parent to do the same.
 
If the other idiot, trent mays, what a stupid name,

This prick:
b13b12be2fb667092c0f6a706700eb2f.jpg

Also gets out of prison and suffers no real penalty to his glorious highschool football career, coz he was a "star athlete" too, that entire school should be burned to the ground along with the headmaster there and the coach because it seems to me that those people value some students over others and value rapists over decent kids. How disgusting.
He still has 1 year in prison so we'll have to wait and see.
 
Ma




usa-crime-ohio.jpg


^Picture from the editorial.


How disgusting. You can get kicked off a team for indecent behavior or smoking pot but rape, no, that's fine. You can play on the team after being a convicted felon. And btw, just 9 months? Granted, the other guy does 2 years but just 9 months for rape? What the hell is this? I get that it's juvenile detention center but I'd imagine there would be a pretty severe sentence for such a crime. 9 months is pathetic for such a crime. You think that girl can get over the fact that she was raped in 9 months? Not even adding the fact that she got bullied after school and online. Well, do you? Do you think 9 months is enough time to get over being raped?

College football or highschool football seems to be the refuge of the scoundrels and they get off easy because it's "prestigious" for the schools. Bah, it's pathetic.

Again, it's not the sentence of 9 months... 9 months... jesus christ... it's not that small sentence that is bothering me the most atm, it bothered me a year ago when it was given, what angers me to no end is the fact that he was allowed to return to the same school and back on the team.

if I were a father in that school and I had my daughter going there, I'd pull her out and transfer her to any other school and encourage every other parent to do the same.

Yup, he should not have been allowed back to the school, period. I agree, if I had a daughter attending there, she would be on her way to private school immediately.
 
Spew your hatred. Get it out of your system.
They served their time and will still be effected by having to register.
If you are going to treat them this way, why not give them the death penalty huh?
Or how about being reasonable and realizing that they served their time?


What is he supposed to do? Drop out of school and live under a bridge for the rest of his life? That wouldn’t just be bad for Richmond—it would be bad for Steubenville, because a juvenile’s rehabilitation and reentry into society is integral to preventing rape in the future. As Irin Carmon wrote in Salon last year, the vast majority of juvenile sexual offenders—from 95 to 97 percent of them—who are caught, punished, and treated will never offend again. (And as Slate reported today, recidivism rates for sex offenders of all ages are actually much "lower than commonly believed.") As Mark Chaffin, professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and director of research at the Center on Child Abuse and Neglect told Carmon, “juvenile sex offenders are not simply younger versions of adult sex offenders,” and treating them the same would only impede our ability to prevent future crimes.

Ma'lik Richmond returns to football in Steubenville: Let's let him get on with his life.
 
Spew your hatred. Get it out of your system.
They served their time and will still be effected by having to register.
If you are going to treat them this way, why not give them the death penalty huh?
Or how about being reasonable and realizing that they served their time?



How about realizing that they weren't adequately punished in the first place and you are allowing known rapists to come back to a school where they can potentially rape again? When this entire fiasco was taking place, we not only had people here blaming the victim, but the media as well was more than taking the side of these two rapists.
 
Spew your hatred. Get it out of your system.
They served their time and will still be effected by having to register.
If you are going to treat them this way, why not give them the death penalty huh?
Or how about being reasonable and realizing that they served their time?



Going to school and playing football aren't related to one another.
He should be banned from the team, that's the bare minimum. But no, aside from having to check-him coz he's a registered sex offender, nothing's changed. He isn't the one who is traumatized, he isn't the one who faced online bullying. And lets not forget the rest of the thing on how the school and the superintended tried to cover up the rape because they didn't wanna lose their "star players". Disgusting. And they got like, some community service and 10 days suspension or smth. The details escape me. A joke anyway. This whole thing is a joke. Except the fact that a girl got raped, that's the only thing that isn't a joke. But from their punishment to the school reaction to this, all a joke. And not a "ha ha" joke, a ****ty one.

You think 9 months is enough for that poor girl to get over what happened to her?

There are minimal sentences for marijuana for 5 years for selling or 1 year for possesion, but rapists can get out quicker than that apparently. In fact, the US justice department found that sex offenders only serve half their time in prison, an average of 5.4 years. So rapists just get to spend a wee bit more time in jail than marijuana sellers. And apparently, 9 months in juvi and then he can play ball.
 
I remember all the rape apologists whining about how "But it will ruin the poor boys' lives!" (well, gee, maybe shouldda thought of that before you raped this girl). But apparently not. Apparently it's ok to be a rapist. Sign of a fine, upstanding student. Yeah, they should totally represent the school.

To be honest, I'm not even all that surprised anymore. I'm really not. Rape apologetics in this country has gotten unbelievable. People get out after a year or two for "good behavior" all the time.

I checked the sex offender register a couple years back. Around here, they only list Level 3 -- serious sex offenses. Rape, child molestation, violent sexual attacks, that kind of thing. These aren't drunk college frat boys who mooned someone. These are serious predators.

There are people who are 30-ish with 2 to 5 separate, severe sex convictions under their belt, who are somehow not in jail. That means that, most likely, none of their sentences exceeded a few years max, if they got sentenced back-to-back. In all likelihood, some of their sentences were only a few months long, or at least that's all they served. You get more than that for being caught with crack. People who rape women, or even children, sometimes walk away with a lighter sentence than a drug user. Let that sink in.

Every park in the city has a ring of child molesters and rapists around it. It's the same the country over -- actually worse, in some places.

People just don't even care anymore. It's all about how the poor rapist might have his life ruined. I wish that once in a while, that would actually happened. It should ruin your life. But it doesn't. Not in America. In America, being a football star is more important than protecting girls from rape.
 
Thank God he didn't take a hit off of a bong....

You can do what you like to Mary, but stay away from Mary Jane.
 
I remember all the rape apologists whining about how "But it will ruin the poor boys' lives!" (well, gee, maybe shouldda thought of that before you raped this girl). But apparently not. Apparently it's ok to be a rapist. Sign of a fine, upstanding student. Yeah, they should totally represent the school.

To be honest, I'm not even all that surprised anymore. I'm really not. Rape apologetics in this country has gotten unbelievable. People get out after a year or two for "good behavior" all the time.

I checked the sex offender register a couple years back. Around here, they only list Level 3 -- serious sex offenses. Rape, child molestation, violent sexual attacks, that kind of thing. These aren't drunk college frat boys who mooned someone. These are serious predators.

There are people who are 30-ish with 2 to 5 separate, severe sex convictions under their belt, who are somehow not in jail. That means that, most likely, none of their sentences exceeded a few years max, if they got sentenced back-to-back. In all likelihood, some of their sentences were only a few months long, or at least that's all they served. You get more than that for being caught with crack. People who rape women, or even children, sometimes walk away with a lighter sentence than a drug user. Let that sink in.

Every park in the city has a ring of child molesters and rapists around it. It's the same the country over -- actually worse, in some places.

People just don't even care anymore. It's all about how the poor rapist might have his life ruined. I wish that once in a while, that would actually happened. It should ruin your life. But it doesn't. Not in America. In America, being a football star is more important than protecting girls from rape.

The average sentence for rapists in america is 5.4 years. It should be over 10 years but most serve just half their sentence.

Meanwhile, non-violent drug offenders (doesn't matter on which side of the argument you fall on, this just to point out the absurdity of it all) serve minimal sentences that for selling are 5 years, and there is no way to get out early. Just like you said, I was just bringing up the numbers.

Somehow, for murder you can get the chair but for just traumatizing someone for the rest of their lives and have them live with it... yeah, that's just 5 years and a bit on average.
That is if they don't suicide. Which is the situation as I will point below with a case in Montana.

Why aren't you mad? Why aren't you going on the streets and protesting? Get angry. Get mad. The politicians don't give a damn. Their fat asses are safeguarded by capital police and those special bodyguards that all congressmen get. Grab a plank and start hitting them over the head with it.

And then you get assholes like these peope:
Montana judge defends one-month rape sentence - CNN.com
Montana judge defends former teacher's one-month sentence for rape of teen
Morales, the 14 years old, killed herself.


Demand that what Florida did go for all the US. Hell, for all the world.
Criminal Penalties for a Rape Conviction | sexoffenderattorney.com
Mandatory Minimum Sentences
Florida has attracted the attention of lawmakers from other states with its "Jessica's Law," which imposes stronger punishments as part of its mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for those who commit certain sex crimes against children, including the conviction of statutory rape of a child. Massachusetts has also passed similar laws based on "Jessica's Law."
As part of these more severe penalties, those convicted of statutory rape will face a minimum of a 10-year sentence if the child was under 12 years of age and the accused is at least 5 years older than the victim; or if the child is between the ages of 12 and 16 and the accused is 10 or more years older; or if the accused has a criminal history and is supposed to be a "mandatory reporter" (a person who because of his/her profession has contact with children and should be reporting crimes committed against children). These mandatory sentences are the minimum, the starting point; the sentences can be added to from there. The concept behind minimum sentencing is to deter would-be rapists, and provide punishment to those convicted.
 
Yup, he should not have been allowed back to the school, period. I agree, if I had a daughter attending there, she would be on her way to private school immediately.

I hear protests work wonders.
Not much else we can do about it now. I only hope they have a conscience that gnaws on them for the rest of their lives and the girl will overcome this, instead of letting it beat her down.
 
How about realizing that they weren't adequately punished in the first place
Except that they were.


and you are allowing known rapists to come back to a school where they can potentially rape again?
Irrational nonsense.
The likelihood of that happening is slim to none.

When this entire fiasco was taking place, we not only had people here blaming the victim, but the media as well was more than taking the side of these two rapists.
Don't care about then, this is the hear and now. They served their time.

If you don't like the laws, work to change them.

Did you think I was kidding when I said the following?

If you are going to treat them this way, why not give them the death penalty huh?
Or how about being reasonable and realizing that they served their time?

Obviously you do not want to be reasonable or rational about this.





Going to school and playing football aren't related to one another.
:doh
A conviction and school isn't related either, and neither is playing football and a conviction.

He served his time.

He should be banned from the team, that's the bare minimum.
No he shouldn't. He served his time.


He isn't the one who is traumatized, he isn't the one who faced online bullying.
YEah he is and was traumatized. And yes he has been bullied. People that are saying the same as you are bullying him online with their comments.


A joke anyway. This whole thing is a joke. Except the fact that a girl got raped, that's the only thing that isn't a joke. But from their punishment to the school reaction to this, all a joke. And not a "ha ha" joke, a ****ty one.
Yeah. You are speaking irrational and emotional nonsense.


You think 9 months is enough for that poor girl to get over what happened to her?
Society through the courts have decided what their punishment was.
If she doesn't like that, she has to deal with it. I suggest you do so as well.


There are minimal sentences for marijuana for 5 years for selling or 1 year for possesion, but rapists can get out quicker than that apparently. In fact, the US justice department found that sex offenders only serve half their time in prison, an average of 5.4 years. So rapists just get to spend a wee bit more time in jail than marijuana sellers. And apparently, 9 months in juvi and then he can play ball.
Yep. Irrational and emotional nonsense. This is not about anything other than these juveniles. Do try to focus.
 
The average sentence for rapists in america is 5.4 years. It should be over 10 years but most serve just half their sentence.

Meanwhile, non-violent drug offenders (doesn't matter on which side of the argument you fall on, this just to point out the absurdity of it all) serve minimal sentences that for selling are 5 years, and there is no way to get out early. Just like you said, I was just bringing up the numbers.

Somehow, for murder you can get the chair but for just traumatizing someone for the rest of their lives and have them live with it... yeah, that's just 5 years and a bit on average.
That is if they don't suicide. Which is the situation as I will point below with a case in Montana.

Why aren't you mad? Why aren't you going on the streets and protesting? Get angry. Get mad. The politicians don't give a damn. Their fat asses are safeguarded by capital police and those special bodyguards that all congressmen get. Grab a plank and start hitting them over the head with it.

And then you get assholes like these peope:
Montana judge defends one-month rape sentence - CNN.com

Morales, the 14 years old, killed herself.

Demand that what Florida did go for all the US.
Criminal Penalties for a Rape Conviction | sexoffenderattorney.com

I have been mad, dude. I was mad when the case happened, and prepared myself for this inevitable result. And I have done some rather outrageous stuff about it. Been doing stuff since I was 15. This general ballpark is my thing, remember?

Here's the problem.

Every time I go out there, the crowd is smaller than it was the last time. Seems more and more people pity the poor rapist, or whatever other bull**** that Americans are swallowing in increasing numbers. The weird monster of a political machine that pedals this has been very effective, for reasons I still don't understand.

And at a certain point, as a human being who is already more sensitive than most, I have to stop reacted to every instance like this I see. Because I see it constantly. Every day. And if I got equally upset each and every time it happened, there's no way I could remain functional enough to even exist, let alone rally for the next time I go out there, and inevitably find myself in a smaller crowd than last time.

I'm a human being and there's fewer and fewer of us who give a ****, and collectively, we're exhausted.

It's as simple as this: the American public is voting against things like bringing justice to rape survivors.

And I have been writing and protesting and getting in behind the scenes for damn near as long as I've been sentient, but somehow, we are just raising people with a lack of humanity, and I can't make up for the vital lesson in empathy that they missed in their childhood. That window is gone.

So what I and everyone else who cares are left doing is just picking up the pieces. Just trying to stop girls like Morales from killing themselves.

Because I can't go stand out there by myself, or with a few hundred other people. Hell, I've done that. I've done it literally alone, on whatever kind of a megaphone I had at the time, because for whatever reason, I wind up with one often. I use the hell out of it.

But there needs to be a critical mass for anything to happen. And we just don't have it. We don't have enough people who care.

If you want to find more people, bottle that rightfully placed rage, and take it to someone who's not convinced. Because I've been over here doing this with whatever other exhausted people I can find for a decade.
 
It's nice in today's day and age that two teammates of difference races can work together. I just wish the work wasn't on a 16 year old girl.
 
The guy that was appointed by the people of Steubenville to sentence criminals found guilty of their crimes in Steubenville courts did his job and assigned the legal punishments that he thought fit the crime, the circumstances, and the law. People who don't like the decision can try to get either the law changed and stiffened - or get the judge removed and replaced. But we by rule of law and have to accept the outcomes the system we have established give us. It's either that or this....

side_40__getty__79046450.jpg
 
Richmond, one of the two teens convicted in the explosive rape case in city along the Ohio River, practiced with the team on Monday as a wide receiver.

Wide receiver? Damn! Now I'm kinda jealous. I wish I would have got to play against a rapist wide reciever when I was in high school. :twisted:
 
The guy that was appointed by the people of Steubenville to sentence criminals found guilty of their crimes in Steubenville courts did his job and assigned the legal punishments that he thought fit the crime, the circumstances, and the law. People who don't like the decision can try to get either the law changed and stiffened - or get the judge removed and replaced. But we by rule of law and have to accept the outcomes the system we have established give us. It's either that or this....

It's really not a binary choice. Agree that a 9 month sentence is enough, or resort to lynchings.

The part that is most offensive is the guy is back on the football team. I can see being readmitted to public school - if he's eligible under the law to attend school, the school has to admit him (AFAIK). But he surely has no right or even expectation to participate in football, and the school system, school and the coach are making a clear statement that they care little to nothing about rape.
 
It's really not a binary choice. Agree that a 9 month sentence is enough, or resort to lynchings.

The part that is most offensive is the guy is back on the football team. I can see being readmitted to public school - if he's eligible under the law to attend school, the school has to admit him (AFAIK). But he surely has no right or even expectation to participate in football, and the school system, school and the coach are making a clear statement that they care little to nothing about rape.

The choice is to either live by rule of law or not to live by rule of law. It really is that binary because if it's only living by rule of law when you agree with it, it's not living by rule of law. If you think rape is unforgivable and that anyone committing it needs punished for life, then pass the law to make that the punishment. I wouldn't be inclined to disagree that 9 months of probation isn't adequate punishment for rape, but then again, I don't know what the Judge based his decision on. Unless there's some school rule against convicted felons participating in their sports program, demanding that the school ban this young man would be arbitary.
 
The choice is to either live by rule of law or not to live by rule of law. It really is that binary because if it's only living by rule of law when you agree with it, it's not living by rule of law. If you think rape is unforgivable and that anyone committing it needs punished for life, then pass the law to make that the punishment. I wouldn't be inclined to disagree that 9 months of probation isn't adequate punishment for rape, but then again, I don't know what the Judge based his decision on. Unless there's some school rule against convicted felons participating in their sports program, demanding that the school ban this young man would be arbitary.

Well, no one is proposing extrajudicial punishment, like a lynching. But because that's the sentence he got doesn't mean we must agree with it, and certainly there are a helluva lot of outcomes post conviction for rape between 1) nine months in jail then getting immediately reinstated on the football team and 2) getting executed by a mob or 'punished for life.'

And it's clearly not 'arbitrary' to deny a convicted RAPIST a spot on the football team. Give me a break. That's the silliest thing I'll read all day.

ar·bi·trary
adjective \ˈär-bə-ˌtrer-ē, -ˌtre-rē\

: not planned or chosen for a particular reason : not based on reason or evidence

: done without concern for what is fair or right
 
BTW, good to know the coach poses the same false choice as Papa Bull:

Coach Reno Saccoccia says Richmond has done everything the school system has asked him to do, both academically and socially, upon his release. He says some people may think he is giving Richmond a second chance. Coach Saccoccia says “We don’t deal in death sentences for juvenile activity and I just feel that he’s earned a second chance.”

Yeah, it's either 1) execute the young man, or 2) allow him back on the team where he can help you win another state championship. Got it!

Of course, Mays (the one still in detention) said this at the time in a text: "I got Reno (footbal coach Reno Saccoccia). He took care of it and sh-- ain't gonna happen, even if they did take it to court." So at least the coach kept his word, so there's that!
 
It would be the very definition of "arbitrary" to make up a special rule just for this young man, but I digress. I've made my points and whether you accept them or reject them is up to you and it really doesn't matter since it's neither your decision or mine to make.
 
It would be the very definition of "arbitrary" to make up a special rule just for this young man, but I digress. I've made my points and whether you accept them or reject them is up to you and it really doesn't matter since it's neither your decision or mine to make.

It certainly doesn't require any special rule I know of in athletics to have standards of conduct and to kick off, or not allow players on, the team who violate them. And certainly getting convicted of RAPE should qualify in most sane programs as a serious violation of expected standards of conduct for people representing your school and your community on the playing field.

And you're on a debate forum, for goodness sakes. Almost nothing discussed here related to decisions that are yours and mine to make.
 
Wide receiver? Damn! Now I'm kinda jealous. I wish I would have got to play against a rapist wide reciever when I was in high school. :twisted:

Well he was a tight end before going to prison....
 
The guy that was appointed by the people of Steubenville to sentence criminals found guilty of their crimes in Steubenville courts did his job and assigned the legal punishments that he thought fit the crime, the circumstances, and the law. People who don't like the decision can try to get either the law changed and stiffened - or get the judge removed and replaced. But we by rule of law and have to accept the outcomes the system we have established give us. It's either that or this....

side_40__getty__79046450.jpg

The lynching of black people and the arrest of rapists are two vastly different things.
 
The lynching of black people and the arrest of rapists are two vastly different things.

And they weren't being equated or even compared so I don't understand the point of that non sequitur. You probably should have read the post before commenting on it.
 
It certainly doesn't require any special rule I know of in athletics to have standards of conduct and to kick off, or not allow players on, the team who violate them. And certainly getting convicted of RAPE should qualify in most sane programs as a serious violation of expected standards of conduct for people representing your school and your community on the playing field.

And you're on a debate forum, for goodness sakes. Almost nothing discussed here related to decisions that are yours and mine to make.

I'm just sayin' you can't take your perspective too seriously on this. Judges do what judges do and then the rest of us get to criticize what they do whether we have any qualifications to make informed decisions about it or not. Right? :)
 
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