2 US high school football players convicted of raping drunken girl

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Ma'lik Richmond, left, is helped by Fred Abdalla Jr., chief probation officer for the Jefferson County juvenile court, as he cries while apologizing to the victim and her family after he and co-defendant Trent Mays were found delinquent on rape and other charges after their trial in juvenile court in Steubenville, Ohio, Sunday, March 17, 2013. Mays and Richmond were accused of raping a 16-year-old West Virginia girl in August 2012. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, Pool)

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio - Two members of a celebrated local high school football team were found guilty Sunday of raping a drunken 16-year-old girl, and Ohio's attorney general warned the case isn't over, saying he is investigating whether coaches, parents and other students broke the law, too.

Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'Lik Richmond, 16, were sentenced to at least a year in juvenile prison in a case that has rocked this Midwestern U.S. city of 18,000 and led to allegations of a coverup to protect the Steubenville High team, which has won nine state football championships. Mays was ordered to serve an additional year for photographing the underage girl naked.

They can be held until they turn 21.

The two broke down in tears after a Juvenile Court judge delivered his verdict. They later apologized to the victim and the community and Richmond struggled to speak through his sobs.

"My life is over," he said as he collapsed in the arms of his lawyer.

The crime, which took place after a party last summer, shocked many in Steubenville because of the seeming callousness with which other students took out their cellphones to record the attack and gossiped about it online. In fact, the case came to light via a barrage of morning-after text messages, social media posts and online photos and video.

"Many of the things we learned during this trial that our children were saying and doing were profane, were ugly," Judge Thomas Lipps said.

Immediately after the verdict, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said he will convene a grand jury next month to investigate whether anyone else should be charged. Noting that 16 people refused to talk, many of them underage, DeWine said possible offences to be investigated include failure to report a crime.

"This community desperately needs to have this behind them, but this community also desperately needs to know justice was done and that no stone was left unturned," he said.

Among those who have been interviewed are the owners of one of the houses where parties were held that night, the high school principal, and the football team's 27 coaches, many of them volunteers.

Text messages introduced at the trial suggested the head coach was aware of the rape allegation early on. DeWine said coaches are among officials required by state law to report child abuse. The coach and the school district have repeatedly declined to comment.

Mays and Richmond were charged with penetrating the West Virginia girl with their fingers, first in the back seat of a moving car after a mostly underage drinking party on Aug. 11, and then in the basement of a house.

"They treated her like a toy," prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter said.

Prosecutors argued that the victim was so intoxicated she couldn't consent to sex that night, while the defence contended the girl realized what she was doing and was known to lie.

The girl testified she could not recall what happened but woke up naked in a strange house after drinking at a party.

"It was really scary," she said. "I honestly did not know what to think because I could not remember anything."

She said she believed she was assaulted when she later read text messages among friends and saw a photo of herself naked, along with a video that made fun of her and the alleged attack.

Three other boys, two of them on the football team, saw something happening that night and didn't try to stop it but instead recorded it with their cellphones. Granted immunity to testify, they confirmed the girl was assaulted and said she was so drunk she didn't seem to know what was happening.

Evidence at the trial also included sexually explicit text messages sent by numerous students after the party. Lawyers noted how texts have seemed to replace talking on the phone for young people. A computer forensic expert documented hundreds of thousands of texts found on 17 phones seized during the investigation.

In sentencing the boys, Lipps urged parents and others "to have discussions about how you talk to your friends, how you record things on the social media so prevalent today and how you conduct yourself when drinking is put upon you by your friends."

After the arrests, the case was furiously debated on blogs and social media, with some people warning of conspiracies and conflicts of interest. On Sunday, Hemmeter, the prosecutor, criticized efforts by the hacker collective Anonymous to publicize the case, saying the attention had a chilling effect on those willing to testify.

After the verdict, the accuser's mother rebuked the boys for "lack of any moral code."

"You were your own accuser, through the social media that you chose to publish your criminal conduct on," she said. She added that the case "does not define who my daughter is. She will persevere, grow and move on."

Echoing that, the judge said that "as bad as things have been for all of the children involved in this case, they can all change their lives for the better."

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Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.