Live Streaming Rape on Periscope on the Rise

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The Periscope link was titled “live sex” and colourful hearts, indicating people were liking the video, flooded the right-hand side of the screen. “This girl is getting raped,” a 20-year-old student in London tweeted.
“I beg you, watch the whole thing,” she added in another tweet. “There was a point where the girl didn’t want sex no more, and the guy was telling her ‘one more’.”
The Periscope live video, shared on Twitter on 30 March, showed three young men and one young woman engaging in sexual activity in a well-lit bedroom in London. According to some of those who watched it, the males were fully clothed, while the female was only partially dressed. When one of the men was having sex with her, the other two were seen to be watching and recording on their phones, and were often heard laughing, or telling her what she should do.
After being alerted by one of the viewers, BuzzFeed News found and interviewed 15 people who watched the video. Although they publicly tweeted the link, all were willing to recount what they saw only if their quotes were kept anonymous.

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The London live stream was not an isolated incident. Last week, Raymond Boyd Gates, 29, was in court having been charged with the rape of a 17-year-old girl in Ohio. What made the case so shocking and unusual was that one of the girl’s friends, Marina Lonina, 18, was in the room at the time and live-streamed the alleged attack to an audience online.
Gates and Lonina have pleaded not guilty to rape and sexual battery, among a number of other charges. The prosecutor said Lonina became excited by turning the attack – which she broadcast on Periscope – into a public spectacle, responding to the comments left by viewers.

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