A 14-year-old boy has been arrested regarding the rape of a 15-year-old girl that was live streamed on Facebook Live a month ago. The Police said on Sunday that the suspect faces charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault, manufacturing of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.
Police authorities said Facebook helped them in securing court orders that prompted the charges and added that another warrant had been issued for the arrest of another minor suspect. Around 40 people watched the crime take place on Facebook Live; however, none of those people reported the incident to the police.
Eddie Johnson, Chicago police superintendent, said at a press conference, “We’ve seen a couple acts in the city now in the last few months involving social media, and it just disgusts me that people could look at those videos and not pick up the phone and dial 911,” the Chicago Tribune has reported.
The victim of sexual assault
Police said that the victim is also being bullied on social media. People have been ringing the family’s doorbell and coming to their house in disturbing ways. These incidents prompted the police to relocate the victim’s family to another home.
Authorities stated that they are looking for a way to charge those people who viewed the video as well as those who are bullying the victim.
However, Facebook explained that it’s not possible to identify the people who watched the video on their platform. As for the bullying, authorities said that it hasn’t come to the point of a criminal conduct and no direct threats have been made to the victim or her family.
Facebook Live is being used to broadcast violence
After a year of its launch, this tool has been used to broadcast around 50 acts of violence including murder and suicides.
The girl’s sexual assault is the second time in recent months that the Chicago police have investigated a crime which was live streamed on Facebook. In January of this year, an assault of a disabled person by a group of people was also broadcast on the social media platform.
Facebook immediately took down the video as the company noted that it does not allow users to glorify crimes on its network.
