The trial of the two high school football players, accused of raping a 16 year old girl from Weirton while she was drunk last year, will continue Friday in Steubenville, Ohio.
Those accused of rape are a 17 year old boy from Bloomingdale and a 16 year old boy from Steubenville. Both are members of Steubenville High School’s Big Red Football Team and the case has divided the community surrounding the school.
The trial is being held in Jefferson County Juvenile Court where testimony continued into the evening hours on Thursday.
MetroNews is choosing not to publicly identify the defendants because they are charged as juveniles.
Their names, however, have been widely used on social media and other traditional media outlets since reports of what allegedly happened last August first came to light on Twitter and Instagram.
The teenagers are accused of raping the girl on the night of August 11th in April 12th while partying when, the claim is, the girl was too intoxicated to consent.
After drinking, the girl was reportedly taken to a number of sites in and around Steubenville and some of those activities were captured on video and in photos that were distributed via text message or Twitter with hashtags like #drunkgirl.
Several teenagers have testified so far.
On Thursday, investigators took the stand to talk about how cell phone records for the defendants and other witnesses, dealing with the activities that night, were collected. In all, more than dozen cell phones were examined as part of the investigation.
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office is handling the prosecution because of recusals from local Steubenville officials.
Special Prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter gave an opening statement on Wednesday.
“You will hear from a lot of teenagers and I imagine that portions of this testimony won’t be easy to hear, won’t be fun to hear,” Hemmeter said of this week’s testimony.
She claims the boys knew the girl was too drunk to consent to sex and took advantage of that to assault, degrade and humiliate her.
Attorneys for the defendants have denied those claims.
The case has been widely discussed through blog posts, Facebook entries, Twitter tweets and YouTube videos.
The victim could be one of the more than 40 witnesses called to testify.