Steubenville Case

After reading about the case in class, I kind of forgot about the whole thing until the case went into trial this past week. This past weekend the two boys, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were found guilty of the rape of a 16 year-old girl. They were both sentenced to a year in a youth correctional institute and will have to both register as sex offenders, while Mays is going to serve another year after that for the distribution of nude photos. I think that this is a wake up call for Steubenville because everyone in the town thinks that these boys are perfect boys because they play for the football team. The whole town lives and breathes for the football team thinking that they can do nothing wrong. In the article I read about the case, it said that there were people that had walked in on the two boys with the girl but he did nothing about it. In the article it said that the reason he was not focused on the situation is because he was so worried about his friend not drinking and driving. I think that all around the country people do a really good job of letting kids know how terrible drinking and driving is. I think that kids are not prepared to handle any sort of situation if they experience rape. Hopefully that is something that many kids have to experience, but there needs to be some sort of way to tell kids what to do if they are in that situation. If this kid knew what to do when he was walking past, maybe the girl could have been helped earlier and been safer. I think that kids also need to have more knowledge on the situations that they're put in. No one thought to get this girl home safely, or call anyone she knew to come and take her home safely. I think kids are too immature to think about any of this which is the very sad part because if a minor is very drunk and non-responsive everyone just jokes about it and doesn't take into consideration that they need to be home safely with people that care about them. These issues need to be taken care of nation-wide and more kids need to be informed about the different scenarios they could possibly be in so they know how to handle themselves. 

Child Abuse

As we are ending our unit about sexual harassment, I read an article about a swim coach at the University of Utah, Greg Winslow, who allegedly abused multiple swimmers and sexually abused one girl. Since 2008, there have been written letters of complaints to the athletic department at Utah but there was nothing ever accomplished and the complaints were ignored. The University of Utah finally suspended him the end of February when he was involved in a sexual abuse case. It shocks me that it took the school so long to realize that the coach needed to be suspended and he needed to be investigated. The reason this is so surprising to me is that because of everything that has happened with Jerry Sandusky, that the University isn't taking these letters of complaints as seriously as they should be. Even though Winslow is not suspected of as many sexual assaults as Sandusky was, any sort of abuse is awful and should not be taken lightly. I think that both the Sandusky case and this case involving Coach Winslow is a wake-up call to all athletic departments in the nation because things are starting to get out of hand and it's not a good thing at all.

HIV Cure

In the news yesterday I read an article that said there is a baby that has been cured of HIV. When the baby was first born, doctors used a series of shots to prevent the HIV from spreading throughout the body and hiding in certain places they wouldn't be able to find later. They routinely did these tests for 18 months and then the family temporarily stopped coming to treatment. When the family came back several months later there were no signs of the virus in the child's blood. With this news coming out it gives an optimistic outlook in the medical field that they are one step closer to accomplishing a goal that is very important to the world. This is a very good sign because if doctors can notice these things when children are just born, we can go to Africa and help stop the disease in newborns to stop from spreading the disease. If we go to Africa and teach the doctors and medical personnel there what steps to take when trying to cure the newborns, it will help them decrease the population of HIV in the country.