Angel Mario Vega, a student at Minnesota State University Moorhead, tried a too-typical stunt: he got a couple of young women (one of them under age) disgustingly drunk, literally carried one of them to his dorm room, set up a camera, and filmed himself raping her. Oh, and of course he bragged to his buddies about it and invited them to come watch. Stupid and a rapist, that usual sweet combination.
But then something interesting happened.
Four other students on their floor told police that Vega encouraged them to come to the lounge area and “see something crazy.” When the students arrived they found the woman drunk and lying topless on the couch, they told police.
After Vega picked the young woman up, saying he was going to take her to his room and “get laid” the students called dorm security who alerted the police.
Whoa. His dorm mates knew it was wrong. It’s a small step, but if a majority were to act when they saw wickedness going down, the world would be a better place.
As for Vega, I would hope the university is going to expel him, and that he also serves some jail time. He’s too stupid and criminal to be allowed in the general population.
Speaking with police, Vega denied knowing how the woman’s clothing ended up in his room as well as stating that he didn’t take the video and photos of the victim found on his phone. He did admit to giving the young woman Fireball whiskey, despite knowing she was only 18.
He’s probably most upset right now about his roomies cock-blocking him.
In this case does underage mean under the age of consent, under the legal drinking age, or the most common meaning of under the age of 18?
@smhll:
The woman in question is, from PZ OP, 18 years of age exactly. Look at the last sentence of the last blockquote.
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i, too, am seriously happy about that…and damn does that make me sad.
Wait, what?
Let’s hope this becomes a thing.
Great!
Now, how about the students work on the next step: preventing the crime? Saying right to the perpetrator “If you do that, it’s rape and I can’t allow that to happen. I’ll call the police the moment you try to take her to your room.”
Maybe one day we will even see that happen.
And for wasting his booze.
Don’t be silly. Do you really want to ruin a man‘s entire life over a youthful indiscretion? What’s next? Community service?!
Pretty much what I thought. Oh, well, babysteps, I suppose.
Wow. This brought back an old memory for me. (over 38 years ago!)
Our dorm used to throw toga parties. It was an excuse to get drunk on trash can punch while wearing nothing but a sheet. There was no supervision at all.
My soon-to-be husband and I were sipping our drinks and watching the crowd.
One young lady was exceptionally drunk, and as each different guy danced with her, her “toga” slipped down further, exposing her breasts. There was a loud competition for taking her to their rooms.
My fiancée deftly ended it by taking me on one arm and offering the other to the drunk girl. We walked her to her door, then went on to our room. Guess who did get “laid” that night?
@1 smhll
Just wondering… “in this case” this matters to you why?
I especially like his argument that he didn’t take the video
of him raping
AN INCAPACITATED WOMAN
IN HIS ROOM
ON HIS PHONE.
A lá Thunderf00t, I imagine 1 ton cell phones are now metaphorically cruising along public streets as well, guileless and helpless to brake.
Can’t be that maybe feminists calling awareness to campus rape helped in raising awareness in these kids.
I’m not even sure what purpose denying taking the video is supposed to serve. I mean, OK so someone else filmed you raping a woman? This is a mitigating factor how exactly?
10@
no brains no headaches.
if the victim was underage then he was also guilty of possession of child pornographic images which he took?
another crime if I am not mistaken.
uncle frogy
Seven of Mine @10, he’s just following the strategy of denying everything, hoping that he’ll be able to wriggle out of it piecemeal, both legally and socially. If he can “prove” that most of the accusations are wrong, then any remaining ones will look less, uh… just less.
Longtime lurker making my comment here, so I want to thank you PZ for all the great reads here…so, here’s the thing: I get really pissed at these kinds of antics. When I was in college and in my twenties, my pals and I were straight up party animals. A pretty young woman getting a little too drunk was something that happened almost every weekend at one of our blowouts. And you know what we did? We would make sure she got home okay, or we’d put her to bed in a quiet back room where nobody would bother her. And (Amanda Marcotte has made this point really well, lots of times) because we were known for throwing fun bashes where women could cut loose and feel safe, well just suffice to say we got our freak on plenty. Safely. With some style. We didn’t have a lot of money, we werent football stars or rock stars or the like, kinda nerdy in fact. But we treated women respectfully, looked out for them, and got laid like crazy. It ain’t difficult fellas.
@12 NelC
– Certain to work for MRA types. But then, in that circle simply saying “Wha…?” would probably suffice.
– Re any legal proceedings… it is due to my father’s influence (though he bagged law school and taught high school) that a really very painful quotation from Edison Haines always comes to mind:
with the “law is not justice” part existing from a broad variety of sources in a broad variety of permutations.
However, I’ve since run into other and, for me, more meaningful bits:
and
And then there’s always the more incendiary view:
Antics? That word choice reminds me of referring to rape of a child as “child molesting”. Y’know, having-trouble-facing-the-truth word choice.
Because he filmed it, I would use the words “aggravated rapes” over “antics”.
Richard @13
That was my point exactly!
I doubt whether the young lady that I mentioned in #7 even remembered who escorted her home that night.
My husband didn’t even remember. (We were drinking, too.)
I also remembered that his best friend (later his best man) was with us in escorting the young lady home.
These were both the sweetest and probably the neediest guys in the dorm, but both perfect gentlemen.
Alas, his sweet buddy was diagnosed with leukemia soon after graduation and died a few years later.
It’s a real shame, as I’m sure that he would have been as excellent as his best friend at being a good husband and father.
It has always been my opinion that the sweet nerdy guys make the best partners in life.
PZ, my hubby, probably you, and many of the members of the horde who comment here are prime examples.
BTW, Welcome and I hope that you continue to contribute!
Damn you, autocorrect!
I meant to say that they were the sweetest and neediest guys in the dorm, not neediest!
And it does it again! Nerd, not need!
Those guys had to overcome a lot of peer pressure to do the right thing.
Kudos to them, but I fear they will suffer harassment. I hope most people will support them and the victim.
@18 magistrmaria
is that a rallying cry?
NERD, NOT NEED! NERD, NOT NEED! NERD, NOT NEED!
– Wasn’t even thinking about this while driving today, when suddenly I realized the long term and ongoing background noise in my head… which occured every time I saw a woman walking alone.
– It was something along the lines of a staticy soup of “Oh crap, she’d better…” or “Oh crap, I hope nothing bad…” or “Oh crap, what if…”
– And I realized that I always think that.
– And then all I could think was DAMN EVERY FREAKING ATOM OF THIS PLANET FOR THE FACT THAT THERE’S A REASON TO THINK THAT.
– The hoped-for positive outcome of this revelation is yet to arrive.
Meanwhile, up here in Canada, there is a story about some off campus activity of students mocking the Safe Spaces initiative at Carlton University.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/carleton-investigates-students-mocking-of-safe-space-policy-1.2758975
Of course every MRA has come out of the woodwork and is crying foul on the CBC forum that these bigot’s rights to free speech has been violated. I’m glad to see that there are some principled students who do not accommodate rape culture on their campus. The sad thing is, for every one story like the on PZ highlighted here, there are dozens of stories that go the opposite direction and are never reported to the authorities. Still lots of work to do.
On the one hand, it’s hopeful to see results like this, though they aren’t new, they also aren’t common enough.
On the other hand, the tactic prescribed to others to “not stand for this when they see it” can only go so far. My notion of people around here such as myself is that we just don’t “hang” with these crowds to begin with. I myself don’t go to bars, don’t go to parties, don’t hang around dorms, and don’t otherwise associate around such people to start with, and I’m not the slightest bit motivated to start, nor do my friends and family, all of which tend to be on the same page as me when it comes to stuff like this, so all we get to do is preach to the choir at best. At best, I can call out such behavior online, but that behavior tends to manifest on “those other forums”, the ones I don’t visit, so really I only get my chance when one of them randomly shows up at the forums I DO go to, and promptly get roundly criticized by everyone else there before I even get the chance.
I suspect that’s the case with a lot of us. Most of us probably don’t hang around the people we would otherwise call out because we don’t like those people to begin with (not least because I find those people dangerous).
I dunno, maybe a protest is in order? How about it P.Z., wanna set the world on fire for a few days? (Metaphorically speaking.)