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Alleged Rape Shocks Ohio Town; Unemployment Holds Steady; Senate Approves Sandy Relief; The Coming Storms

Aired January 04, 2013 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: CNN NEWSROOM continues right now with Ashleigh Banfield.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Suzanne.

Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield, live in New York City.

And I want to start this hour with a disturbing case. A rape case that happened in Steubenville, Ohio. One of those relatively small towns where just about everybody knows everybody else and Friday night football is king. The alleged victim in this case is a 16-year-old girl. She was reportedly drunk and reportedly possibly unconscious when she was allegedly raped by two high school football players. The alleged rape came to light through some shocking tweets, a cell phone photograph that reportedly shows the limp victim being carried by her arms and her legs, and online video that shows young people callously laughing about it all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What if that was your daughter?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But it isn't.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If that was my daughter, I wouldn't care, I'd just let her be dead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen to yourself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm listening to myself fine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In about 10 years, I'm going to come back to this video.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ten years. My daughter's going to be getting raped and dead in 10 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: The two 16-year-old football players are set to go on trial next month. The lawyer for one of them says that the images in this case have been taken out of context. And in a town the size of Steubenville, there are certainly concerns about at least the impression of conflicts of interest. So, Ohio's attorney general is now leading the prosecution in this case. And I asked him all about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE DEWINE, OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL: I hope people believe that we bring an impartiality to it. Our goal as prosecutors is not just to get convictions. Our goal, frankly, and the ethical job of a prosecutor is to seek justice and find out what happened and to seek the truth. And that's what we're trying to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Dr. Drew Pinsky is going to be here in a moment to help us sort through some of the more disturbing aspects of this story. The morality of it all. But first, CNN's Poppy Harlow has much more on this troubling case and the impact on the community.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

POPPY HARLOW, CNNMONEY.COM (voice-over): On the night of August 11th, teenagers in Steubenville, Ohio, gathered to celebrate the end of the summer. The first day of school was just two weeks away. By many accounts, there was heavy drinking going on for most of the night, spread out over several different parties. But there may have been more than that. Far more.

Tweets, photos and videos possibly document a crime from that night. An alleged sexual assault of a seemingly intoxicated unconscious under aged teenage girl by members of the high school football team. An assault that other party goers allegedly watched and later shared details online.

This tweet from a party goer reads, "song of the night is definitely rape me by Nirvana." Other tweet call the girl sloppy and talk about a dead body, referring to the girl's state of unconsciousness. One tweet even refers to the fact that the girl may have been urinated on, though police say there's no evidence that actually happened.

Three days after the party, the girl's mother came forward to the police and filed a report alleging sexual assault. She came with a computer drive showing a Twitter page and other possible evidence, according to police. Many of these postings were soon taken down.

The police chief in Steubenville told CNN he asked for any witnesses to come forward with details of what they saw that night, but initially only two did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's how the first two arrests were made within the first two weeks. We have witness statements there that, I mean, as far as anybody else being involved, nobody else has come forward.

HARLOW: On August 22nd, two 16-year-old members of the football team, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were arrested. They were later charged with rape and Mays was also charged with disseminating photographs of a nude minor. By December, the incident had created a fissure in the community. Some came to the boys' defense, saying they were unfairly and to quickly accused. Others were relieved, tired, they said, of the anything goes culture for the popular football players.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a football player. You get to do what you want as long as you've got a winning season.

HARLOW: Mays' lawyer denied a rape occurred, saying he will challenge whether any possible sexual activity was consensual. Alexandra Goddard, a blogger and former Steubenville resident, started looking into this story after hearing that high school football players were involved. Goddard found most of the online postings and reposted them to her website before they were taken down.

ALEXANDRA GODDARD, BLOGGER: I found -- I, you know, went through the Twitter accounts and I found, you know, very disturbing messages basically laying out a timeline of what happened that evening and found the cache of the YouTube video. Just found all of the social media which told the story of what happened that night.

HARLOW: Mays lawyer told CNN it's his client who has been tried unfairly online and that he will be exonerated once all the facts come out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Greeting citizens of the world, we are Anonymous.

HARLOW: On December 23rd, the Internet hacker group, Anonymous, got involved, threatening to release information on the high school football players involved in the incident unless a public apology was made to the alleged victim by January 1st.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will not sit idly by and watch a group of young men who will turn to rape as a game or sport got the pass because of athletic ability and small town luck. You now have the world looking directly at you.

HARLOW: Anonymous posted this picture online showing a girl whose face is blurred who is seemingly unconscious being carried by her hands and feet by two males. It's not possible to verify the photo is of the alleged victim, but the defense attorney for one of the accused, Ma'lik Richmond, confirmed to CNN his client is in the photo, but said the image is taken out of context.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That young lady is not unconscious. That young lady was capable of walking and her friends are individuals who indicated that information to the police.

HARLOW: This 12-minute video also surfaced online, where teens appear to talk about the alleged assault and continually joke about the girl's condition, even at one point saying she must have died because she didn't move during the alleged rape.

TEEN 1: Hey, what if that was your daughter?

TEEN 2: But it isn't.

TEEN 1: What -- TEEN 2: If that was my daughter, I wouldn't care. I'd just let her be dead.

TEEN 1: Hey, listen to yourself.

HARLOW: The trial for the two boys accused of rape is scheduled for mid February.

Poppy Harlow, CNN, Steubenville, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: Dr. Drew Pinsky is an expert on human behavior. In fact, his show, "Dr. Drew On Call" is on every weeknight on our sister station HLN.

So, Dr. Drew, I think most people who see this story see the headlines, see any aspect of it, first question would be, how could this happen?

DR. DREW PINSKY, HOST, HLN'S "DR. DREW ON CALL": Well, that to me, frankly, Ashleigh, is the scariest question anybody can ask themselves right now. This is a cautionary tale. This is a cautionary tale for every one of us. We are entering into a new world here in this country where people walk in with machine guns and kill little kids and boys treat girls like this. It's disgusting. And if we say to ourselves, man, that couldn't be my kid, watch out, caveat emtor (ph), that could be your kid. And unless we are actively parenting against this, the world that these young men live in where images and objectifications of women are pouring down on them through the Internet since they are pre-teen, should we be wondered -- should it be any wonder to us that they treat young women like this. So much of this story for me is about how young males are treating young females and it's disgusting and we have got to, as parents, be aware of this and parent against it.

BANFIELD: None of us -- none of us as parents think that we actually have to sit our boys down and say, you know rape is wrong, right?

PINSKY: That's right. That's right.

BANFIELD: I mean what kind of a conversation do I have to have with my kid?

PINSKY: Listen, Ashleigh, listen, here's what you have to have. If you're with a young lady and she's under the age of 18, you don't get that -- you can't have sex with her, even if you're 16 in many states. If she is intoxicated in any way, that is a rape. I find it stunning that the attorney in this case says, oh, well she can walk. She can walk. She doesn't have to be carried. So, therefore, it wasn't a rape. The fact is, certainly in the state of California, if you are in any way intoxicated, you are not in a condition to render consent. If you are under the age of -- whatever the age is in your state, you're not of age to render consent. And we must educate our young males about this.

And think about that 12-minute video where the young males are laughing --

BANFIELD: Oh, that's my next question.

PINSKY: About a young woman being dead and raped and thinking that's funny. This is not a woman. This is some sort of rag doll that they play with.

BANFIELD: Well, help me get into the minds of a group of young boys as they get together. Does something happen to them when they're in a group --

PINSKY: Yes, sure.

BANFIELD: That homogenizes a whole lot of other things that otherwise they would be mortified by?

PINSKY: Yes. Yes, of course. And there is a bystander phenomenon that's been well documented for adults, too. And, again, adults are guilty of this, not just young people, but this is a young person story, so it's so much about parenting. There's things we can do as parents here.

But, yes, of course, group process, group pressures, particularly for young males, can affect how they behave. But what's interesting to me in that video, if you really watch it, there are males within that video going, hey, whoa, hang on a second here and they're sort of laughed down and teased down by the other males. This is very similar to the phenomenon we saw in the subway victim that was pushed in front of a subway and nobody did anything.

We are less likely to act in let's say morally creative and appropriate ways when we're in a group than when we are by ourselves. These might be, some of these kids, sucome (ph) to the group pressure and have a good moral compass of their own, but not good enough to be able to speak up. And, again, parents out there, co-mission, meaning participating in something, and omission are very -- not stopping something, are very close relatives. And, again, if you don't parent about that, kids aren't going to get that.

Be careful, guys. There is -- there is pornography raining down on these young males and there is social media where they feel entitled to act out on real people and not understanding or empathizing or developing empathy with the consequences of what it is they're doing.

BANFIELD: So, you know, you know as well as I do, and people who have been following this story, that the tweets have been horrendous.

PINSKY: Horrific, yes.

BANFIELD: That this girl has been attacked by young people and older people alike. I think one of the tweets that went out about her called her a train whore.

PINSKY: Yes.

BANFIELD: And then others even went so far as to say, what else are you going to tell your parents when you come home like that. You've got to make something up. And now our football program, you know, might be blown up because of this.

I mean, these are grownups doing the same things as the children in this case.

PINSKY: Well --

BANFIELD: Instead of saying, let's all step back and let the law play out before we comment.

PINSKY: Ashleigh, I hope that is not a global symptom of that poor little town. I hope that is just some isolated parents that are representative of parents throughout the country. Again, I think there's a -- a bigger -- a bigger lesson to be learned here than really tightening the screws on that town. I think all of us need to pay attention to this.

And, again, how these young women are being treated. This is an alcohol story too. If your teens are drinking, they are at risk for every adverse outcome you can possibly measure. Whether it is a rape or an unwanted pregnancy or an STD or an accident, you always find drugs and alcohol. The mortifying piece of this story is, there's rumors, and admittedly these are just rumors, that adults may have been aware or even providing rumors, substances in this case. And they would be held accountable certainly in this state if that were the case.

BANFIELD: Yes. A lot of (INAUDIBLE). A lot.

PINSKY: And what we have to do as parents, hold our peers accountable.

BANFIELD: I asked the Ohio attorney general about that. He said the investigation is going further, but he would not commit to me that they're investigating that angle of what you just listed out, and that is people who are a part of the --

PINSKY: A rumor at this point.

BANFIELD: The bigger ancillary part of this individual crime. There could be other crimes, as well.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, thank you.

PINSKY: Yes.

BANFIELD: Thank you for your insight.

PINSKY: Thank you, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: I want to remind you all that you can watch Dr. Drew, his program "Dr. Drew On Call" is on weeknights at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on HLN.

Want to switch gears now. There's a lot of news today. Employers didn't seem to be in any big rush to add workers, even as Congress strolled up to that big old fiscal cliff and peered over the edge, kind of went over a wee bit and then scrambled back up on top. The employers still created 155,000 jobs in December, leaving the unemployment rate at 7.8 percent. Private companies hired 168,000 new workers, while governments eliminated 13,000 positions. Jill Schlesinger is an editor-at-large for CBS MoneyWatch.com.

Still beating expectations, those numbers?

JILL SCHLESINGER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, CBS MONEYWATCH.COM: Yes, we're a little bit better. I mean for the whole year we averaged 153,000 jobs a month. It's a wild coincidence. The exact same number as 2011. All in all, it's a good year.

BANFIELD: Yes, that was weird.

SCHLESINGER: That is wired, right? It's the same number. It's a good, but not great year for job creation.

BANFIELD: So since you went back to 2011, let me take you back three more years and maybe you could give me the -- Christine Romans always says the trend is your friend. So give four years and create for me what we need to take out of this chart.

SCHLESINGER: Well, let's take a look at this and we can see that basically we know the recession started in December of 2007. So we had two brutal years of job losses. 2008 and 2009. Eight million jobs vaporized in this country.

We crawled back out starting in the beginning of 2010. We see the bottoming of February of 2010. And then we see some job spikes. There was some government hiring from the census. And then sort of sideways job growth. So here's the trend that you can take away, at least in the last two years.

Growth in this country has been OK. Two percent growth is about, eh. We want 3 percent growth. With 2 percent growth, we're only going to get 150,000 jobs a month or so. We're not going to get 200,000 to 250,000. We're not going to get enough of those 12 million people back to work. So in a sub par growth world, it's hard to see how employment really ratchets up from here.

BANFIELD: So I'm not going to suggest for a minute there's one thing to blame for that, but I know a lot of people blamed uncertainty and what Congress was doing was creating so much uncertainty leading up to the end of the year. That doesn't look to be going away anytime soon, Jill.

SCHLESINGER: No.

BANFIELD: So here's my question. When the speaker of the House and the president say, I'm done negotiating, and it looks like Republicans want to hold the debt ceiling as, you know, as leverage to get those spending cuts that they so desperately want and, you know, many say this country needs, what's that going to do for uncertainty and jobs in 2013?

SCHLESINGER: Jumping off the fiscal cliff is nothing compared to blowing through the debt ceiling. And here's why. The fiscal cliff was something that was created out of Congress. It was sort of a manufactured crisis.

Now, the debt ceiling is for real. We come up against a borrowing limit and the government has to stop paying bills and it's a blunt instrument. So, I don't think either side wants to blow through the debt ceiling and they don't want to have the economy crater.

That said, I think we've got to take a little bit of this blusterer with a grain of salt. They are positioning and renegotiating. What we really want to take away from this whole period of time is, remember something important. When the government pulls back on spending, it has a negative impact on growth. We may be addressing the debt and the deficit, and that may be a really good thing long term, but in the short run it hurts growth.

If you look over in Europe, you look at austerity measures, governments pull back, not so good for economic growth. So when we say we want to fix the debt and the deficit, we have to be very careful how soon and how quickly that occurs.

BANFIELD: Kind of like after the holidays when you're feeling a little heavy, you can't just stop eating.

SCHLESINGER: No, you can't.

BANFIELD: You've got to keep eating.

SCHLESINGER: You've got to keep going.

BANFIELD: You've just got to be more careful.

Nice to see you. Thanks for coming in. good to see you in person finally.

SCHLESINGER: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: All right, Jill, thanks very much.

So Jill Schlesinger gave us that news. And I've got other news for you, too. Republicans attacking their own after Speaker Boehner refuses to hold a vote for aid for victims of Superstorm Sandy. Well, today, the vote. And my next guest says this fight is a sign of, quote, civil war in the GOP. Don't miss it. Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Hurricane Sandy victims may be in the eye of another storm, but this one is all hot air. It's a political storm. Today the House passed the first part of a Sandy disaster relief package, $9.7 billion, but it was supposed to be $60 billion. OK, so some Republicans howled after Speaker John Boehner scrapped the vote Tuesday on that big $60 billion one. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, yes, he didn't shy away from this. He said this is why Americans hate Congress. The House is going to consider the rest of everything, the rest of the $51 billion in aid package later on this month. In the meantime, Errol Louis joins us from New York. Errol hosts "Inside City Hall," a political show in New York City.

I want to quote for our audience right now something that you just wrote in a cnn.com piece. And it says this. "The battle over relief funding for areas devastated by Superstorm Sandy should leave no doubt about whether there is a war within the Republican Party over the fundamentals of taxation and spending."

I'd love it if you could just lay out for me what that war really looks like when it comes to people and exactly what they're saying to each other.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, in broadest terms, there are those who come to Congress, and it really reflects what you were just talking about with your previous guest, there's some who come to Congress and say, this is my position. I will stand on it. I will die on it. You can vote me out of office. I will not change. Congress is spectacularly poorly suited to people like that, but there are a lot of them in Congress it so happens.

BANFIELD: Well, many of them sign a pledge. I mean if you start with pledges and indifference and intransigents and things, even the president was saying, I am done negotiating, isn't it their job as politicians? That's what politics is, you've got to negotiate.

LOUIS: Exactly right. I mean if you think about it, let's say you're going to go and haggle in the Casba (ph) in Morocco, or right down here in China Town, if you're going to go out and sort of haggle over prices, you go in there and you -- maybe your first statement is, you know, $5 and not a dollar more. Everyone understands that's the start of a negotiation. But there are some people in Congress for whom it is not a negotiation. It is deadly serious. They do not think one penny should be added to the deficit for any reason.

And it doesn't matter how many pictures you show them of devastated areas after a disaster, it doesn't matter how much you show them poor people who are on the edge of misery or starvation, they are saying, this has got to get dealt with, it's got to get dealt with now. We don't care if the bill is really going to come due in five years or 10 years, or 20 years. It's got to be dealt with today and we will stop anything we have to. And that faction has been causing John Boehner endless amounts of grief.

BANFIELD: So there's this little old Republican in a little old tiny state up in the northeast called New Jersey named Chris Christie who has been scathing on his attacks. Doesn't he have leverage over what people in his party are saying and doing? Can't he sway one group one way or the other?

LOUIS: One would think so. But, you know, it's sort of showed this last incident and all of those really shrill, in some ways, comments that came from so many people, it shows the limits of their power. People don't make threats like that if they can actually make good on them. They make threats because they're frustrated because they can't. And when somebody is elected to Congress, that person really is only answerable to his or her constituents.

BANFIELD: But what else is the elected official who promises his constituents, I'll go to Capitol Hill and I will fight for spending cuts, because we're out of control, what else does that person have as leverage if it's not something like the debt ceiling, which is the ultimatum, like do this or we're all going to die.

LOUIS: Sure. Well, I think what some of them may learn to discover, as I think John Boehner already has, a certain amount of finesse, personal relationships, a little bit of trading, some of this for some of that. Maybe we'll get to it in 10 years instead of in two years. We'll sort of reason together. That's the way it's supposed to work.

BANFIELD: Are you saying -- are you saying that they're lacking finesse? Are they just worried that cable news will call them out within minutes of whatever they say or do?

LOUIS: Well, you know, obviously, look, their local politics may demand it. And we shouldn't be too quick, I think, to just condemn the members of Congress, as Chris Christie did. The reality is, they are responding to people who did elect them to do certain things.

BANFIELD: I see you on the TV all the time. It's the first time I've met you in person. Thanks. Nice to meet you.

LOUIS: Likewise. So good to see you.

BANFIELD: Thanks, Errol. Errol Louis coming in to talk with us live.

Coming up, as the northeast continues to recover from Superstorm Sandy, and make no mistake, there's still 3,000 people who don't even have power and it's cold here, folks. We've got to consider what's next. And the scientists say, hey, this is just a sign of things to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Living near the ocean, there's always that chance that the, you know, the ocean is going to come, you know, take away everything that you've got.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Chad Myers says he has never seen weather like this. He is standing by with a report on what you can expect, coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Believe it or not, hurricane season doesn't end until the start of December. But normally speaking, we feel like we're pretty much in the clear when October rolls around. And the key word here is "normally." Because normally we don't get hit by hurricanes two days before Halloween as in October 29, 2012. That's the day that Superstorm Sandy slammed the northeast coast and caused several billion dollars worth of damage. This Sunday night, CNN is going to present to you "The Coming Storms." It's a wakeup call. And it would be good if you had a peek at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Living near the ocean, there's always that chance that the, you know, the ocean is going to come, you know, take away everything that you got. But never did I imagine that this was going to happen to me and my family and my community.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Even now, given all that has happened to him and his family, it is still hard for Nick Camarata (ph) to understand it all. He has lived here along the shores of Staten Island for two decades with his wife and four boys. Back in 2011, Camarata survived Hurricane Irene, so he paid close attention to reports of another potential hurricane headed his way in late October.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It's been a very fickle storm, but it's going to be sucked in here, into the northeast somewhere.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were all hoping that the storm was going to blow more towards the south and not come north.

CARROLL: A few miles away, at Columbia University, climate scientist Adam Sobel was keeping an eye on Sandy, as well.

ADAM SOBEL, PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: At the beginning it was just, wow, look at that. That would be a big deal if that happened. But, you know, a week ahead of time, we don't take it that seriously.

MYERS: It's still four days away. This could have a significantly bigger impact on New York City, Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey than Irene did last year.

CARROLL: As Sandy moved north, it merged with a winter storm, creating a superstorm, double the size of a normal hurricane.

MYERS: The one part storm that was already on land was combining with the hurricane that was offshore. As they combined, it was almost one plus one equals two and a half.

CARROLL: Many in Sandy's path evacuated. Nick Camarata did not.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At about 6:00, the tide should be way out. I walked down the block and I started seeing water coming on to Cedar Grove. And I started yelling and banging on doors for everybody to get out of their houses because this is going to be a storm of disastrous magnitude.

SOBEL: I was, as a scientist, fascinated. But as a citizen of this city, as time went on, I started to feel more and more actual fear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Fear, just one part of it all.

Chad Myers, he was in that story that you just saw by Jason Carroll.

So, Chad, you're live in the weather center, an apropos place. Obviously a lot of people say global warming when they see these storms and the increasing coastal flooding and the tornadoes and the hurricanes, et cetera. Should they be saying global warming?

MYERS: For Sandy?

BANFIELD: For any of it?

MYERS: I'm not sure we can put a finger on one event. We can't say a tornado was global warming. What we can say with this storm, with Sandy, is that the water off the East Coast was two degrees warmer than it should have been at that date. That close to, you know, Halloween, the water should have been significantly cooler. It wouldn't have stopped Sandy, but I think that warm water probably increased Sandy by 10 percent.

So, yes, of course, global warming has something to do with it. We have more carbon dioxide in the air than we ever have. True. We have -- now, the carbon dioxide holding in the heat. True. I don't care where you think that carbon dioxide came from out there in TV land, I don't even care that this argument is irrelevant. It is there. The carbon dioxide is there. The heat is there. The ocean is warmer, so storms will probably be stronger in the future.

And like you said when you started this, this was almost, you know, hurricane season doesn't end until the end of November, start of December. We saw two storms that started to be tropical storms before hurricane season. Maybe our hurricane season will get longer if our water warms up quicker.

BANFIELD: I know there are so many questions and they began on first reports that you were delivering well before Halloween saying make alternative plans because I have never seen anything coming like this. So Chad, thank you for that.

This is great viewing and I highly recommend that our viewers take a look at it. It is called "The Coming Storms" Sunday night at 8:00 Eastern.

So I will bet that you know somebody right now who is sick or at least a dozen people, right. Doctors' offices are overwhelmed and the flu season is hitting all across America.

Elizabeth Cohen is going to join me live next on what is shaping to be pretty bad. But here is the big question Elizabeth is going to have to ponder, is it the worst ever? Coming back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)