Investigation into the Florida beach gang rape of an unconscious female spring-breaker last month has resulted in yet another perpetrator’s arrest for the daytime assault.
So far three of the four young men involved in the appalling incident, which occurred at the height of Spring Break in Panama City, have now found themselves in police custody.
But Florida’s officials say their crime, which was videotaped, was made all the worse because it was witnessed by hundreds of onlookers who themselves should be considered active accomplices in that they did nothing to help the victim.
"There's hundreds, hundreds of people standing there -- watching, looking, seeing, hearing what's going on," Bay County’s irate sheriff, Frank McKeithen, said. "And yet our culture and our society and our young people have got to the point where obviously this is acceptable somewhere. I will tell you it is not acceptable in Bay County."
And, more grievous still, is that Sheriff McKeithen has seen numerous other videos taken of similar sexual assaults, all of the victims in them passed out, as if they’d been doped, and all of the spectators acting equally indifferent.
"This is not the first video we've recovered,” he says. “It's not the second video, it's not the third video. There's a number of videos we've recovered with similar things to this, and I can only imagine how many things we haven't recovered."
The sheriff department’s spokeswoman, Ruth Corley, who’s working with the current Florida beach gang rape victim to identify and apprehend all four of her attackers, has confirmed that this case is just the tip of the iceberg.
She says that, via social media, authorities "have been able to find video of girls -- incoherent and passed out, and almost like they’re drugged -- being assaulted on the beaches of Panama City in front of a bunch of people standing around."
Spring Break lawlessness has escalated in recent years, with this season’s festivities resulting in nearly three times the number of arrests than for the same period in 2014.
Most of the young women targeted for gang rapes though probably don’t remember what befell them, or, if they do, are hesitant to press charges, so the present victim’s determination to bring the perpetrators to justice is an exception.
Although she has no memory of being raped that day, she recognized herself in the film footage of it released online and in news reports and immediately contacted the police.
Now, with their assistance, she’s also trying to identify some of the callous bystanders who saw the nonconsensual acts committed against her, but simply looked on, or even cheered.
