A jury has convicted a former Vanderbilt football player on all counts after finding that he encouraged his teammates to rape an unconscious woman he had been dating. It took jurors a little more than four hours of deliberation before finding Brandon Vandenburg guilty on five counts of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery. In addition, he was convicted of one count of unlawful photography.
The verdict comes amid a furor over the six month sentence a former Stanford swimmer was given for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. It also comes during an ongoing debate about sexual assaults on the nation's college campus and the conduct of student athletes.
The lives of everyone involved have been ruined, deputy district attorney general Tom Thurman said of the case. He said he hoped the widespread publicity surrounding the Vanderbilt case would send a message. The jurors in this case had to decide whether to hold Vandenburg, 23, criminally responsible for what teammates were accused of doing to the female student in a dorm room in June of 2013. His defence had maintained that he was drunk and should not be held responsible for what players he didn't even know did to the woman.
Four former players were all charged in the case, but only two were accused of raping and sexually assaulting the woman. Throughout the trial, Vandenberg was portrayed as a man who violated the female student's trust by plying her with alcohol and then encouraging teammates to sexually assault her.
"He served her up to three strangers — for whatever reason, it doesn't matter, is that he did it,'' assistant district attorney Jan Norman told jurors in closing arguments on Saturday. Prosecutors told jurors that he passed out condoms to the other players, recorded the rape and sent footage to friends as it was happening. The trial featured graphic videos and photos that were taken from the players' cell phones.
