Please Sign This Petition!!! 17-year-old sexual assault victim could face charges for tweeting names of attackers
by pinkagendist
17-year-old sexual assault victim could face charges for tweeting names of attackers
A Kentucky girl who was sexually assaultedcould face contempt of court charges after she tweeted the names of her juvenile attackers.
Savannah Dietrich, the 17-year-old victim, was frustrated by a plea deal reached late last month by the two boys who assaulted her, and took to Twitter to expose them–violating a court order to keep their names confidential.
“There you go, lock me up,” Dietrich tweeted after naming the perpetrators. “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.” Her Twitter account has since been closed.
Attorneys for the attackers asked a Jefferson District Court judge to hold Dietrich in contempt for lashing out on Twitter. She could face up to 180 days in jail and a $500 fine if convicted. The boys have yet to be sentenced for the August 2011 attack.
“So many of my rights have been taken away by these boys,” Dietrich told Louisville’s Courier-Journal. “I’m at the point, that if I have to go to jail for my rights, I will do it. If they really feel it’s necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me as opposed to throwing these boys in jail for what they did to me, then I don’t understand justice.”
Dietrich was assaulted by the pair after passing out at a party. They later shared photos of the assault with friends.
“For months, I cried myself to sleep,” Dietrich said. “I couldn’t go out in public places.”
On June 26, the boys pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism. Terms of their plea agreement were not released.
“They got off very easy,” Dietrich, who says she was unaware of the plea agreement before it was announced in court, said in her interview with the newspaper.
“They said I can’t talk about it or I’ll be locked up,” Dietrich tweeted after hearing, according to the paper. “So I’m waiting for them to read this and lock me up.”
“[Protecting rapists] is more important than getting justice for the victim in Louisville,” she added.
A hearing for the contempt of court charge is scheduled for July 30. Attorneys for Dietrich want it open to the media, while the boys lawyers want it closed.
Both the Gannett-owned Courier-Journal and Dietrich’s attorneys “have filed motions to open the proceedings, arguing she has a First Amendment right to speak about what happened in her case,” the newspaper said.
An online petition asking the judge to throw out the charges against Dietrich, launched Saturday, has already accumulated hundreds of signatures.
“[She] should not be legally barred from talking about what happened to her,” Gregg Leslie, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the Associated Press. “That’s a wide-ranging restraint on speech.”
Signed!!!
ridiculous…
My parents were silent until the day they died. My brother and sister are silent to this day. Silence solves nothing. It simply passes the sickness on to a new generation.
Signed!
Linda Ellen Kinkead Moore
Indeed, silence only makes the problem worse. Thanks Linda!!!
Thank you so much for posting this, P.A. I had seen the news story and was so stunned and flipping irate but did not see the petition, or maybe it was not up this morning. Now there are over 22,000 signatures.
Peace, ~ Lily
Hi, Lily
When I signed yesterday there were 5000 signatures, today there are 35,000!!! Hopefully some tv news program will pick up the story soon… that’s usually what it takes for things to happen.
There are almost 100,000 signatures now. I wish there were a million, but 100,000 is not bad!
Signed and shared.
Thanks Wendy!
Reblogged this on Cait.
Signed!! Best of luck and prayers!
Typical American “justice.”
In the UK we have “Superinjunctions” where it is not even lawful to state that one has been obtained.
What is the Internet for? Name them, everywhere!
How do systems aimed at achieving justice end up falling into such obvious injustices?
Definitely well worth signing. Done and done!
Reblogged this on Talenin.com and commented:
A damn good cause to support! A flawed legal system should be fought.
Thanks!
No charge.
That’s ridiculous. IF anyone should be allowed to talk about a sexual assault, its the victim. It is therapeutic to talk about it for the victims, and the rapists should be exposed for the scumbags that they are just as publicly as she is being exposed for having it happen to her. WHY are we protecting rapists??? Once a rapist always a rapist regardless of ages. I’d rather know who they are then to be hanging out with one and not know and have it happen to me too!
She’s already been traumatized. Why punish her more by throwing her in jail? whatever happened to freedom of speech?