A SHADOWY GROUP OF ONLINE HACKERS HAS LAUNCHED CYBERATTACKS AGAINST ‘WRONGDOERS’ FOR THE PAST TWO DECADES
It was late summer 2012. The 16-year-old girl from West Virginia had no memory of the horrific ordeal she had endured when she woke up in a basement in Steubenville, Ohio, without her underwear on. But her rapists had photographed and even videoed some of the horrendous assault and posted it on social media. Everyone knew that high-school students Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond were responsible, but the wider community closed ranks around their star football players. For months, the silence was deafening, and the case went nowhere.
However, there were some disgusted Steubenville residents who were willing to put their heads above the parapet and speak out, including sexual abuse survivor Michelle McKee. And she was supported by hacker Deric Lostutter, a member of a shadowy online activist group known as Anonymous. “The more I found out, the angrier I got,” he said. “What really got me heated is the girl’s friends – and everybody else’s friends – stood around and watched it happen, and nobody did a thing.”
So, two nights before Christmas, using the online pseudonym KYAnonymous, Deric made a video on his laptop. Wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, he opened with the line, “Greetings citizens of the world, we are Anonymous. Around mid-August 2012, a party took place in a small town in Ohio known as Steubenville…” He then pretended the group had the personal details of the youngsters, teachers and parents involved in the crime and subsequent cover-up after hacking their online accounts. He said these would be leaked on the internet if they did not come forward by New Year’s Day to take responsibility. He posted the video on YouTube and went to sleep. “Our goal wasn’t to hack,” he explained. “Our goal was to get the attention of higher authorities and get them involved.”
It proved a highly successful tactic. Major news networks CNN, Fox and ABC began to give the story coverage, and Deric ramped up the pressure when he released a 12-minute video, which had been sent to him anonymously, of a drunk former Steubenville student discussing the rape in detail, which then went viral. Rallies on behalf the victim were staged and under an increasingly nationwide glare, the authorities were forced to act, and the rapists were arrested and charged.
In 2013, Richmond and Mays were convicted of rape, and sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention institution. Mays was given an additional year for the dissemination of child pornography, as he’d shared pictures of the 16-year-old victim. They served ten and 22 months respectively, before being released and going on to become college football players. The town’s School Superintendent was charged with tampering
