The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American male teenagers accused of raping two white women in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a legal injustice in the United States legal system.
Speak, published in 1999, is a young adult novel by Laurie Halse Anderson that tells the story of high school freshman Melinda Sordino. After Melinda is raped at an end of summer party, she calls the police, who break up the party. Melinda is then ostracized by her peers because she will not say why she called the police. Unable to verbalize what happened, Melinda nearly stops speaking altogether, expressing her voice through the art she produces for Mr. Freeman's class. This expression slowly helps Melinda acknowledge what happened, face her problems, and recreate her identity.
Speak is a 2004 American coming-of-age teen drama film written and directed by Jessica Sharzer in her feature directorial debut, based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Laurie Halse Anderson. Starring Kristen Stewart, Michael Angarano, Robert John Burke, Eric Lively, Elizabeth Perkins, D. B. Sweeney, and Steve Zahn, the film follows Melinda Sordino (Stewart), a high school freshman who stops talking after senior student Andy Evans (Lively) rapes her at a party.
Debra Jean Williams, better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, is a convicted sex offender who formerly taught at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In 2005, she pleaded guilty to lewd or lascivious battery against a teenager. The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old student in mid-2004. Lafave's plea bargain included no prison time, opting for three years of house arrest due to safety concerns, seven years of probation, and lifetime registration as a sex offender.
Junko Furuta was a 17-year-old Japanese high school student who was abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered. Her abuse was mainly perpetrated by four male teenagers, Hiroshi Miyano (18), Jō Ogura (17), Shinji Minato (16), and Yasushi Watanabe (17), and took place over a 40-day period starting on 25 November 1988. In Japan, the case is known as the "concrete-encased high school girl murder case", as her body was discovered inside of a concrete-filled drum. The prison sentences served by the perpetrators ranged from 7 to 20 years. The brutality of the case shocked Japan, and it is said to be the worst case of juvenile criminality in the country's post-war history.
Laurie Halse Anderson is an American writer, known for children's and young adult novels. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2010 for her contribution to young adult literature and in 2023 she received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Shawn Paul Humphries was a murderer executed by the U.S. state of South Carolina. He was convicted of the January 1, 1994, murder of Dickie Smith in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. Humphries was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. EST on December 2, 2005, by lethal injection at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
The Duke lacrosse case was a widely reported 2006 criminal rape hoax case in Durham, North Carolina, United States, in which three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. The three students were David Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann. The accuser was Crystal Mangum, a student at North Carolina Central University who worked part-time as a strip tease dancer. She alleged that the rape occurred at a party hosted by the lacrosse team, held at the Durham residence of two of the team's captains, and where she had worked on March 13, 2006.
Lorenzo Jerome Gilyard Jr., known as The Kansas City Strangler, is an American serial killer. A former trash-company supervisor, Gilyard is believed to have raped and murdered at least 13 women and girls from 1977 to 1993. He was convicted of six counts of first-degree murder on March 16, 2007.
Shanda Renée Sharer was an American girl who was tortured and burned to death in Madison, Indiana, by four teenage girls. She was 12 years old at the time of her death. The crime attracted international attention due to both its brutality and the young age of the perpetrators, who were aged between 15 and 17 years old. The case was covered on national news and talk shows and has inspired a number of episodes on fictional crime shows.
A Friend to Die For is a 1994 American psychological thriller television film directed by William A. Graham. Written by Dan Bronson, the film is inspired by the real-life murder of Kirsten Costas, who was killed by her classmate, Bernadette Protti, in 1984. The film was the highest-rated TV movie of 1994.
Rape by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator deceives the victim into participating in a sexual act to which they would otherwise not have consented, had they not been deceived. Deception can occur in many forms, such as illusory perceptions, false statements, and false actions.
Rehtaeh Anne Parsons, was a 17-year-old Cole Harbour District High School student who attempted suicide by hanging at her home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, on April 4, 2013, leading to a coma and the decision to switch her life support machine off on April 7, 2013. Her death has been attributed to online distribution of photos of an alleged gang rape that occurred 17 months prior to her suicide, in November 2011. On a Facebook page set up in tribute to her daughter, Parsons' mother blamed the four boys who allegedly raped and released images of her, the subsequent constant "bullying and messaging and harassment", and the failure of the Canadian justice system, for her daughter's decision to die by suicide.
People v. Turner, formally The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner (2015), was a criminal case in which Brock Allen Turner was convicted by jury trial of three counts of felony sexual assault.
The Vanderbilt rape case is a criminal case of sexual assault that occurred on June 23, 2013, in Nashville, Tennessee, in which four Vanderbilt University football players carried an unconscious 21-year-old female student into a dorm room, gang-raped and sodomized her, photographed and videotaped her, and one urinated on her face.
The murder of Rachael Anderson occurred on January 28, 2018, in Columbus, Ohio. Anderson, a twenty-four-year-old aspiring funeral director, was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Anthony Pardon in her apartment on her birthday.
Shlomo Haliva, known as The Weeping Rapist, is an Israeli serial rapist, murderer and suspected serial killer. While serving a rape sentence he was imprisoned for in 1976, Haliva was convicted for the murder of a woman in 1983, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released after 47 years in April 2024.
Andrei Vladimirovich Roldugin, known as The Voronezh Maniac, is a Russian serial killer and rapist who committed a series of nine rapes and three murders in his hometown of Voronezh from 1996 to 2002. Caught shortly after the last killing, he admitted to his other crimes fully and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
Stewart Rudolph Weldon is an American serial killer who kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered three women in Springfield, Massachusetts, from December 2017 to March 2018. The bodies of the victims were uncovered on Weldon's property after he was arrested for attempting to kill a fourth victim in May 2018. He pleaded guilty to the murders on September 28, 2021, and was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences.
