Review by Booklist Review
Many readers will remember the horrifying story. In 2012, in Steubenville, Ohio, high-school football players repeatedly raped a young woman and then posted videos of their actions on social media. The ensuing investigations and trials were discussed on talk shows and documented in the press, including a front-page article in The New York Times and a lengthy follow-up in The New Yorker. This current retelling comes from a slightly different perspective, as author Schwartzman, director of the award-winning documentary Roll Red Roll (the rallying cry of Steubenville football fans) brings to it the benefit of historical perspective (Donald Trump's campaign; the #MeToo movement) and her filmmaker's eye, laying out the events and aftermath in exacting detail. Schwartzman, working with coauthor Zelevansky, also includes the perspectives of a California-based crime blogger who spent her youth in the Ohio Valley and Steubenville women residents who came forward with stories of personal sexual assault from previous decades. This compelling account offers heartbreaking evidence of the pervasive, systemic, and toxic misogyny that thrives in many American communities.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Filmmaker Schwartzman's debut, a follow-up to her 2019 documentary Roll Red Roll, is a searing account of the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case and its aftermath. In 2012, a 16-year-old girl was assaulted by members of the town's high school football team, and pictures, descriptions, and jokes about the crime went viral as the teens posted to Twitter and Facebook. The girl, who was drunk and possibly drugged, and her family only learned of it via social media. Parents and school officials closed ranks to delete texts and posts in an effort to impede the investigation. But true-crime blogger Alexandria Goddard and vigilante hacker group Anonymous posted everything they dug up online, and the Steubenville case became notorious as the first rape case in the U.S. widely documented with images on the internet. Two team members were convicted in juvenile court and sentenced to one and two years for the attack, but the culpable adults were never convicted of obstruction or collusion, and the author concludes the town's boys will be boys mentality remains the same today. Schwartzman's sense of outrage fuels the narrative, but never overwhelms it. This tragic cautionary tale deserves a wide audience. Agent: Lucinda Halpern, Lucinda Literary. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
This powerful and compelling narrative covers the 2012 rape of a teenage girl by members of the Steubenville, OH, football team. Schwartzman, an award-winning filmmaker and human rights activist, spent three years in the Steubenville area researching and filming her 2018 documentary about the crime and subsequent trial. Using interviews, police records, trial transcripts, and social media posts, Schwartzman and her coauthor Zelevansky give readers an inside look at rape culture, victim blaming and shaming, and the need to provide comprehensive sex education. As the authors state, "rape is preventable," but individuals and communities must work together to end toxic masculinity and rape culture. The book provides an extensive list of resources that can help bring about those changes. VERDICT This first-rate book will appeal to anyone interested in feminism, women and gender studies, or criminal justice.--Diane Fulkerson
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A scathing examination of American rape culture, promoted and abetted by athletics. Documentary filmmaker Schwartzman focuses on an incident that occurred in 2012 in Steubenville, a small town in the "football-obsessed state of Ohio." High school football players threw a party in which some of them repeatedly raped an intoxicated young woman--and, moreover, boasted of the event on social media as it was happening. "As a result of their tweets and texts," writes the author, "in the aftermath they couldn't deny what had happened." That didn't keep their coaches and other school officials from trying to cover up the rape, which later led to grand jury indictments--but, unsurprisingly, only the mildest of punishments for the rapists. Therein, Schwartzman observes, lies the crux of a toxic culture that explains away crimes against women as the product of youthful exuberance and adrenaline. In the grim industrial town in which the crime occurred, gridiron success affords the possibility of escape via college scholarships, and locals tend to be disinclined to take that possibility away over what is explained away as teenage hijinks. Indeed, in a local bar, Schwartzman overheard "men [who] grumbled with resentment about trumped-up charges and girls who deserved what they got." Small wonder, given such attitudes, that it's so difficult to enact effective policies to combat rape culture, including simple sex education. The people Schwartzman encountered in town were less concerned with the fact of gang rape than with "negative attention about the football program." Furthermore, the women of Steubenville expressed their tacit support by voting for Donald Trump in 2016. "Women's supposed solidarity around being potential victims of sexual violence was trumped by their allegiance to whiteness, and their own gender bias," writes Schwartzman. Meanwhile, the perpetrators earned their scholarships, lauded as "good kids, good football players," and rape culture rolls on. A maddening, well-documented account of crime without punishment even as violence against women continues unabated. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
