Naming people on the internet in regards to sexual crimes is dangerous. I understand the frustration of her and her family and I cannot say she was wrong to make the injustice public.
With that said, this is not a clear cut issue. I hope grace prevails and we do not attempt to ruin the boys lives in pursuit of vengeance. This is not something a mad internet does very well and would be a justifiable reason for the court to ban publication.
>"Naming people on the internet in regards to sexual crimes is dangerous."
Sexually assaulting people in real life is dangerous.
Why should the victim care one iota about what happens to these guys? Because of some arbitrary "moral-code", "justice" or "rule-of-law"? If this were me, I'd have done the same or worse. Which is why I can say, unabashedly, good for her. She witnessed first hand how the justice system works. They got their slap on the wrist, no she'll get hers.
So sexual assault is OK as long as they are kids? I have four kids and often think courts are ridiculously stupid for trying them as adults.
However, two of my kids are daughters. As the victim, their rights should trounce the rights of the attackers. That doesn't necessarily mean naming them, but if they aren't going to be named (which is usually the right thing to do for juveniles), they must be appropriately punished.
Unfortunately, we are missing whether they were appropriately punished. From her perspective, I'm sure the answer is No, but objectively, we don't know the answer.
I can't imagine how much it would suck to be a judge.
>So sexual assault is OK as long as they are kids?
OK? of course not. But it shouldn't destroy their whole lives, the way being publicly named would. As long as you're a kid you deserve another chance, even after murdering someone. That's the whole point of trying juveniles differently.
We sometimes have a tendency to err on the side of whatever has the strongest emotional pull. It's important to protect your daughters from becoming victims, but don't forget that your sons can also be victimized by false accusations or even false convictions. Don't forget that what you think is "appropriate punishment" from hearing one side of the case may actually be far too much for the actual crime, or perhaps even a non-crime where someone plead guilty because the plea deal let them get on with their lives sooner and with less risk.
Criminals should be appropriately punished. But those decisions need to be made in light of all the facts, preferably within the legal system. Dumping the names out there on Twitter is, as an above post said, dangerous. Maybe these guys deserve it, but maybe "twitter justice" will give these guys -- or some innocent kid in a similar case -- punishment far beyond what they deserve.
With that said, this is not a clear cut issue. I hope grace prevails and we do not attempt to ruin the boys lives in pursuit of vengeance. This is not something a mad internet does very well and would be a justifiable reason for the court to ban publication.