Roll Red Roll Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by Nancy Schwartzman

  Cover design by Terri Sirma

  Roll Red Roll documentary art: Image and title design by Rob Fuller, Composition by Briana Fahey; texture by Wilqkuku / Shutterstock

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  First Edition: July 2022

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2022936476

  ISBNs: 978-0-306-92436-1 (hardcover), 978-0-306-92438-5 (ebook)

  E3-20220513-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE: “She’s So Dead”

  1 The Crime

  2 The Morning After

  3 The Place

  4 The Investigation

  5 The Coach

  6 The Players

  7 The Vigilantes

  8 The Trial

  9 Hurry Up and Heal

  10 The Grown-ups

  11 The Prodigal Son

  12 The Reverberations

  13 The Present

  NOTES

  RESOURCES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCOVER MORE

  For my beloved father, Dr. Robert J. Schwartzman,

  a die-hard football fan, who held this story

  with me, every step of the way.

  1939–2021

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  IN DECEMBER 2012, when I first learned of the Big Red football case in Steubenville, Ohio, I almost wrote it off as just another awful story. As a human rights activist and documentarian focused on gender-based violence, I’d seen countless rape cases played out in the press, the focus primarily on the victim’s role and complicity, rarely on the perpetrators—their behavior, the need for consequences. The Steubenville story seemed like all the others. After all, the Department of Justice estimates that one in six women are the victims of attempted or completed rape annually, and we know that those numbers are higher in actuality, as rape is a vastly underreported crime. The risk for young women ages eighteen to twenty-four is three times higher than the average population. In reality, the average rapist has to commit twelve assaults before going to prison. Steubenville’s story is practically the norm in the United States.

  But as I learned more about what happened, adrenaline began to rise in my chest: this case, which involved the sexual assault of a teenage girl by high school football players in a downtrodden former steel town, offered a window into rape culture unlike anything I’d seen before. The rape was live-tweeted by the local teenage boys, who anticipated, observed, and recounted it without concern for privacy, accountability, or the girl’s well-being. As a result of their tweets and texts, in the aftermath they couldn’t deny what they’d done. This was a glimpse at the perpetrators’ mindset, illuminating the different roles people play in an assault like this one—and why. It demonstrated how easily a seemingly average set of circumstances can spiral into something horrific when there’s a culture of enablement, entitlement, and denial.

  I set out to make a documentary film about the crime and ensuing case. I would ultimately arrive on the ground in Steubenville a year to the day after Jane Doe’s assault, prepared to discover for myself what kind of environment birthed the incident. I spent the next three years filming, traveling in and out of the town, learning its rhythms, talking to locals, and recording their often-divided perspectives. Over that time, I learned that a powerful economic force of boosters funneled big money into Steubenville High School’s “Big Red” football program. I learned that the depressed community’s sense of self, fragile after years of economic instability, hinged on the success of that team. And I learned about a legacy of systemic sexual abuse that had hung over Steubenville for generations. That’s one of the reasons why Jane Doe herself does not feature prominently in the work I’ve done around this case. What needs investigating and interrogation isn’t about the victim. It’s about the perpetrators, the bystanders, the culture that created them and then, inadvertently or not, allowed them to thrive. For a long time, nothing had changed. And I came to realize that the culture of this place didn’t just reflect the residents of this Ohio town; it was the legacy of our shared history. This was a microcosm. This was our heartland. This was our America.

  This is our future if we don’t make a change.

  I went to a high school with alcohol-fueled weekend parties not unlike those of Steubenville High School. A varsity tennis player, I came from a sports-loving family and understood intense relationships with coaches, what it meant to your family for you to succeed on the field or court. When the entire town of Steubenville, or any community, comes together to celebrate in the stands on Friday nights, it can be a beautiful thing, but not when celebrating the boys takes precedence over protecting the girls.

  When digging into the trove of social media and text messages traded between those involved, I felt like I knew these teens, especially the ringleaders. They reflected some of the same attitudes of my peers growing up, and even some of my own. If I had stayed in my hometown, a tight-knit and somewhat conservative community outside of Philadelphia, my worldview might not have shifted. I took a different path—left home, moved to New York City, and traveled the world. Motivated by my own experiences and those of friends and even strangers, I chose activism, using storytelling and technology to create safer communities for women and girls. Before shooting my film, I created Circle of 6, an award-winning mobile app designed to reduce sexual violence among America’s youth. Recognized by organizations from the Obama White House to the United Nations, it’s been used by more than 350,000 people in thirty-six countries. The Steubenville story, at the intersection of rape culture, technology, and athletics, is an amalgamation of everything that makes me who I am.

  Understandably, I was fascinated by the undercurrents of this disturbing situation. Rape culture wasn’t unfamiliar to me—I could recognize that I was born and bred inside of it like everyone else—but the social media platforms were new. I wanted to understand what empowered boys to talk about rape so casually and broadcast it so publicly. What was specific to this place, and many others today, that enabled unabashed rape culture like this to fester? It was all out there. Prosecutors sifted through more than 360,000 text messages and hundreds of tweets to uncover the truth. And, as I read the texts and social media posts myself, the lack of empathy and remorse chilled me, as it did many others across the country who followed this story.

  While technology is mainly neutral, the way we use it is variable. Seeing it overlap in the gender space, I was amazed at the power of social media: to incriminate, to empower, and to shine a light in the darkness.

  What surprised me most was that despite the overwhelming evidence created by the teenage boys themselves, despite the ensuing rallies, the trial, and later the grand jury investigation of school officials and others charged with ignoring and/or covering up potential evidence, the town of Steubenville was divided. Instead of working to understand the root causes of this terrible rupture, many residents felt victimized by unwanted media attention and emphasized how overblown the reaction was to the rape. They stressed Jane Doe’s complicity and split hairs about what constituted “rape.” If we want to understand what defines “rape culture,” then here it was, laid bare. I couldn’t look away.

  The Steubenville rape case, and the experience of the town, underscored the need for all of us to take responsibility as friends, parents, family members, classmates, teachers, school administrators, coaches, and community members. As adults and role models, when we don’t stand in defense of a specific victim, we’re making our own children and their peers vulnerable too. This case’s national attention lit a fire under many Americans, who felt disturbed and angry and now understood, on a more visceral level, the need to actively create change. Steubenville helped spur what is, hopefully, the beginning of a transformation in cultural discourse and behavior via movements like #MeToo and the expansion of protections like Good Samaritan laws.

  Today my film, Roll Red Roll, has screened at more than fifty festivals and 200 institutions and streamed in 190 countries. I’ve learned that telling and retelling these stories can c
hange lives, and there is so much more to explore in hindsight ten years later: What impact did Steubenville have on the national discourse? What, if anything, has evolved? What can we be doing differently if we want to effect change? Jane Doe has since graduated from college, gotten married, and, by all appearances, done her best to move on with her life. But the story of this case remains incredibly important, as it’s a mirror. If the retelling can help one young woman come forward or one young man intervene, then this book has done its job.

  Rape is preventable. Steubenville is just like your community, filled with dimensional people whose views are formed from their own experiences and education in school, at home, and out in their world. The bystanders and even rapists are not all simply “monsters.” They don’t look different; they hide in plain sight. They are us—our sons, our fathers, our pastors, our coaches, our friends. In order to eradicate the problem, we as individuals and communities have to take responsibility and teach accountability to our children so that they understand right from wrong and learn to speak up, even if it’s an unpopular choice or no one else is doing it. We have a chance to learn from our mistakes, call in a diversity of voices, and protect future generations. But first we have to be willing to take a hard look at the unconscious, entrenched behaviors that allow this type of culture to flourish.

  Roll Red Roll is that opportunity.

  PROLOGUE

  “SHE’S SO DEAD”

  MICHAEL “NODI” NODIANOS was having the night of his life.

  Surrounded by half-empty plastic soda bottles and the pent-up energy of the athletes who ignored him during school hours, he couldn’t miss. He was killing it. Lonely nights spent reading blogs and watching TV news with his family were finally a useful social advantage. He knew stuff. Not much. But stuff.

  It was late on a muggy August night. His face was slick and flushed pink, eyes glazed from alcohol and sudden attention. He was landing almost every joke—and the crowd was too wasted to notice the duds. He was the headliner of the high school house party, a smaller preseason gathering between bangers.

  “She is so dead!” He cracked, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “She’s deader than a doornail.”

  “How dead is she, Nodi?”

  “She’s deader than JFK! She’s deader than Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.”

  His audience egged him on: fellow Steubenville High School student Evan Westlake picked up his Samsung Galaxy and hit record. This shit was too good to miss.

  Nodi was soft and plain-faced. At this point in the night, though, the tables had turned. The football team—amped from winning their preseason scrimmage, swole from working out at five a.m. practices, pumped from a summer of chasing Facebook likes and hoes—were the spectators. Usually relegated to the stands, Nodi became the main event. For once, they were watching him.

  This classic wood-paneled rec room—hoodies tossed over recliners, bare legs stuffed into gym socks and sneakers, the stench of sweat and pack proximity—was the closest Nodi would ever get to the locker room, and he knew it. He had to keep this going.

  “She is so dead!” he chirped. “She’s deader than OJ’s wife.”

  He was rewarded with laughter again. He was so wrong, he was right.

  Other teens were still arriving, ducking into the dim subterranean den. One by one, they left their quiet Ohio neighborhood behind—front porches tied with birthday balloons, mailboxes in neat rows, Dodge Rams and Chevys parked in driveways.

  Nodi sipped from a super-size McDonald’s soda. He tugged at his boxy Buckeyes t-shirt, taut around the middle. “They raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team,” he tried, referencing an old assault case the other boys didn’t seem to know. “She’s deader than Caylee Anthony,” he quipped, invoking the infamous killing of a two-year-old girl. “She’s deader than Trayvon Martin!”—the Black teenager shot to death in Florida earlier that year.

  “You’re a sick fuck!” one of the boys yelped, but they were cracking up again, disembodied voices beyond the camera’s shallow depth of field.

  Nodi kept it coming. “Her puss is about as dry as the sun right now!”

  Out of the darkness, a dissenting voice threatened Nodi’s roll. “Yo,” said Shawn McGhee, one of the school’s top wrestlers. “This shit is not funny.” His voice was deep and definitive.

  Nodi seemed to panic. He doubled down. “It’s not funny,” he sniped, doubt registering for an instant on his face before his expression morphed into a smirk. “It’s hilarious!” But the magic was lifting. “You didn’t see how they carried her out… like she was Jesus Christ back from the dead?”

  “What if that was your daughter?” Shawn challenged.

  “If that was my daughter, I wouldn’t care.” Nodi shrugged. “I would just let her be dead.”

  Shawn’s judgment had changed the tenor of the room, power dynamics shifting like plates in the ground. Even Evan’s laughter faltered from behind the camera, if only for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “but Nodi is funny. That’s not funny, but…”

  Nodi’s glow was fading. Time was ticking down. His moment in the spotlight was almost up.

  While Nodi performed his comedy routine, at another house just a short drive away, a sixteen-year-old girl was being sexually assaulted by some of his classmates. “Trained,” as the boys liked to say. She was passed out—“dead,” as Nodi described her. The source of his best stand-up material.

  Before Nodi’s younger but more popular pals, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, left the house party with the girl, they and their fellow athlete friends had already started to openly violate her, snapping pictures of her unconscious body to post on social media. They carried her, limp, out to their friend Mark Cole’s car, stepping on her hair as they walked. No one made a decisive move to stop them. Now they’d started sharing photos of the assault in real time with their buddies in the basement. And apparently it was hilarious.

  “It isn’t really rape because you don’t know if she wanted to or not,” Nodi snickered, shaking his head and grinning, back in the basement. “She’s dead! That may have been her final wish.”

  “That’s like rape,” said Shawn abruptly. “It is rape. They raped her. Trent and Ma’lik raped someone.”

  “This is the funniest thing ever!” tittered Evan, his momentary shame seeming to fade.

  At dawn, Evan uploaded the video to his personal YouTube channel for his thirty-eight followers to watch. Its audience would balloon into the millions.

  Nodi’s fifteen minutes were not quite up.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE CRIME

  ON AUGUST 12, 2013, a year to the day after the assault, I arrived in Steubenville for the first time. It was nearing twilight. The highway was lined with oak trees. I could hear crickets singing and smell the remnants of a recent rainstorm on the breeze. Having read the news stories, I expected an ugly place, gritty and unforgiving, but the landscape was lush and serene.

  We entered on a beautiful mini–suspension bridge over the Ohio River. For a moment, I was transported to my teenage years outside of Philadelphia and the liminal melancholy that accompanies the end of the summer, the lead-up to school starting. The surroundings felt familiar to me. I sighed. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a sign directing visitors to “Lover’s Lane, Steubenville,” and I was jolted from my memory into this very real moment. There was nothing romantic about this place or what led me here.

  ONE YEAR EARLIER

  “DEATH VALLEY! DEATH VALLEY! ROLL RED ROLL!” A packed crowd roared Steubenville High School’s “Big Red” rally cry. Coach Reno Saccoccia called a play. The squad huddled behind the line of scrimmage. They fell into formation and charged. A crush of bodies leaned in from the stands: students, teachers, townspeople, and parents, so many parents. Moms with slashes of dark lip liner and frosted highlights pumped fists in the air, then yanked up their low-rise jeans. Dads hunched forward in nylon sports jerseys, alert to every signal and stutter-step on the field, their breath rising and falling with the rhythm of downs. “GO BIG RED! ROLL RED ROLL!”