LibGuides: True Crime Book Club: Nov. 2023

About the Authors: Nancy Schwartzman & Nora Zelevansky

Nancy Schwartzman
- Nancy Schwartzman is an American filmmaker, activist, and advocate who is known for her work in the field of sexual assault prevention and awareness. She has directed and produced several documentary films, with a strong focus on issues related to sexual violence, consent, and gender equality.
- "The Line" (2010): One of her most notable works is the documentary "The Line," which explores the complex issue of consent and sexual assault. The film features interviews with survivors, experts, and perpetrators and examines the blurred lines between consent and coercion.
- Tech 4 Good and Activism: Nancy Schwartzman is also known for her work in using technology for social good. She has been an advocate for using technology to prevent sexual violence and educate individuals about consent. She founded the Tech 4 Good organization, which promotes innovative solutions for addressing issues related to sexual assault.
- Impact and Advocacy: Schwartzman has been a vocal advocate for sexual assault survivors and has worked to create spaces for dialogue and education surrounding consent and healthy relationships. Her work has contributed to increased awareness and understanding of these issues.
- Continued Filmmaking and Activism: In addition to "The Line," Schwartzman has continued to work on projects related to sexual violence prevention and education. She has also been involved in public speaking engagements, workshops, and educational initiatives aimed at promoting consent culture.

Nora Zelevansky
- Nora Zelevansky is an American author and journalist known for her work in writing, particularly in the areas of fiction and lifestyle.
- Writing Career: Nora Zelevansky is known for her work as an author and journalist. She has written both fiction and non-fiction, and her writing often explores themes related to relationships, identity, and contemporary urban life.
- "Semiautomatic" (2012): One of her notable works is the novel "Semiautomatic," a humorous and insightful novel that delves into the lives and relationships of a group of young professionals in Los Angeles. The book received positive reviews for its wit and character-driven storytelling.
- Lifestyle Writing: In addition to her fiction work, Nora Zelevansky has contributed to various publications and websites, writing on topics related to lifestyle, fashion, travel, and culture.
- Journalism and Essays: Zelevansky has written essays and articles for publications like The New York Times, Town & Country, and Vogue, covering a range of subjects from personal experiences to societal and cultural observations.

Other Writings:

Nancy Schwartzman

Roll Red Roll

Nora Zelevansky

Roll Red Roll

Competitive Grieving

Will You Won't You Want Me?

Semi-Charmed Life

MLN Materials

book
playaway

Synopsis

In football-obsessed Steubenville, Ohio, on a summer night in 2012, an incapacitated sixteen-year-old girl was repeatedly assaulted by members of the "Big Red" high school football team. They took turns documenting the crime and sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The victim, Jane Doe, learned the details via social media at a time when teens didn't yet understand the lasting trail of their digital breadcrumbs. Crime blogger Alexandria Goddard, along with hacker collective Anonymous, exposed the photos, Tweets, and videos, making this the first rape case ever to go viral and catapulting Steubenville onto the national stage. Filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman spent four years embedded in the town, documenting the case and its reverberations. Ten years after the assault, Roll Red Roll is the culmination of that research, weaving in new interviews and personal reflections to take readers beyond Steubenville to examine rape culture in everything from sports to teen dynamics. Roll Red Roll explores the factors that normalize sexual assault in our communities. Through inter-views with sportswriter David Zirin, victim's rights attorney Gloria Allred and more, Schwartzman untangles the societal norms in which we too often sacrifice our daughters to protect our sons. With the Steubenville case as a flashpoint that helped spark the #MeToo movement, a decade later, Roll Red Roll focuses on the perpetrators and asks, can our society truly change?

Discussion Questions

How did the book portray the Steubenville sexual assault case? What were the key events and individuals involved?
What were your initial thoughts and feelings when you read "Roll Red Roll"? How did the book make you feel about the subject matter?
"Roll Red Roll" highlights the role of social media in the case. How did social media affect both the incident and the subsequent investigation? Do you think the outcome would have been different without social media?
The book touches on the concept of bystander intervention. In what ways did bystanders contribute to the assault, and how did they react afterward? What are your thoughts on the bystanders' actions and inactions?
How did the community of Steubenville react to the case? What role did community attitudes and expectations play in the events and their aftermath?
The book interviews individuals from Steubenville, including some who were supportive of the perpetrators. What do you think motivated this support, and how does it reflect societal attitudes toward sexual assault?
What impact do you think "Roll Red Roll" had on raising awareness about consent, sexual assault, and rape culture?
The book focuses on the experiences of the survivor and her family. How do you think they handled the situation, and what were the challenges they faced?
What were the legal and ethical implications of the case? Were the perpetrators held accountable, and was justice served?
In the book, several people are held accountable, including the perpetrators, but also those who documented and shared the assault. What are your thoughts on assigning responsibility in such cases?
"Roll Red Roll" is part of a larger conversation about the #MeToo movement and sexual assault awareness. How do you see this documentary fitting into the broader discussion about sexual violence and consent?
What steps can communities and individuals take to prevent sexual assault, promote consent culture, and support survivors?
Have you seen the documentary “Roll Red Roll”? What did you think? How does it relate or differ from the book’s retelling?

Fact vs Fiction: Steubenville

In football-obsessed Steubenville, Ohio, on a summer night in 2012, an incapacitated sixteen-year-old girl was repeatedly assaulted by members of the “Big Red” high school football team. They took turns documenting the crime and sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The victim, Jane Doe, learned the details via social media at a time when teens didn’t yet understand the lasting trail of their digital breadcrumbs. Crime blogger Alexandria Goddard, along with hacker collective Anonymous, exposed the photos, Tweets, and videos, making this the first rape case ever to go viral and catapulting Steubenville onto the national stage.

The true crime blogger who published a 'mountain' of social media evidence that was used to convict two high school footballers of rape. Her original blog is still available here.

A complete timeline of the events is available here.

TV & Movies

Something happened to Chloe after that party last Saturday night. Something she says she can't remember. Something everybody is talking about. Set at a Midwestern high school, in a world of Facebook and Twitter, smartphones and YouTube, Good Kids explores a casual sexual encounter gone wrong and its very public aftermath. Who's telling the truth? Whose version of the story do you believe? And what does that say about you?

At a pre-season football party in small-town Steubenville, Ohio, a heinous crime took place: the assault of a teenage girl by members of the beloved high school football team. What transpired would garner national attention and result in the sentencing of two key offenders. But it was the disturbing social media evidence uncovered online by crime blogger Alex Goddard that provoked the most powerful questions about the case, and about the collusion of teen bystanders, teachers, parents and coaches to protect the assailants and discredit the victim. As it painstakingly reconstructs the night of the crime and its aftermath, Roll Red Roll uncovers the engrained rape culture at the heart of the incident, acting as a cautionary tale about what can happen when teenage social media bullying runs rampant and adults look the other way. The film unflinchingly asks: “why didn’t anyone stop it?”

Sam Gleason lives in a town where high school football is the backbone of the community. When she accuses a member of the team of committing heinous acts against her on a night she can't even remember, will anyone believe her?

The #MeToo Effect by Leigh Gilmore
Call Number: 305.42 Gilmore
The #MeToo movement inspired millions to testify to the widespread experience of sexual violence. More broadly, it shifted the deeply ingrained response to women's accounts of sexual violence from doubting all of them to believing some of them. What changed? Leigh Gilmore provides a new account of #MeToo that reveals how storytelling by survivors propelled the call for sexual justice beyond courts and high-profile cases. At a time when the cultural conversation was fixated on appeals to legal and bureaucratic systems, narrative activism--storytelling in the service of social change--elevated survivors as authorities. Their testimony fused credibility and accountability into the #MeToo effect: uniting millions of separate accounts into an existential demand for sexual justice and the right to be heard. Gilmore reframes #MeToo as a breakthrough moment within a longer history of feminist thought and activism. She analyzes the centrality of autobiographical storytelling in intersectional and antirape activism and traces how literary representations of sexual violence dating from antiquity intertwine with cultural notions of doubt, obligation, and agency. By focusing on the intersectional prehistory of #MeToo, Gilmore sheds light on how survivors have used narrative to frame sexual violence as an urgent problem requiring structural solutions in diverse global contexts. Considering the roles of literature and literary criticism in movements for social change, The #MeToo Effect demonstrates how "reading like a survivor" provides resources for activism.
Believing by Anita Hill
Call Number: 305.4209 Hill
Believing is a story of America's three decades long reckoning with gender violence, offering insights into its roots, and paths to creating change. We once thought gender-based violence - from casual harassment to rape and murder - was an individual problem that affected a few; we now know it's cultural and endemic. Here Anita Hill draws on her years as a teacher, legal scholar, and advocate, to demonstrate the impact it has on every aspect of our lives. And she is uncompromising in her demands that our laws and our leaders must address the issue concretely and immediately.
Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
Call Number: 331.4 Farrow
In this instant New York Times bestselling account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost. In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood's most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family. All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance they could not explain -- until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood to Washington and beyond. This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement. Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook our culture.
Missoula by Jon Krakauer
Call Number: 362.883 Krakauer
Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, with a highly regarded state university, bucolic surroundings, a lively social scene, and an excellent football team - the Grizzlies - with a rabid fan base. The Department of Justice investigated 350 sexual assaults reported to the Missoula police between January 2008 and May 2012. Few of these assaults were properly handled by either the university or local authorities.In this, Missoula is also typical. A DOJ report released in December of 2014 estimates 110,000 women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are raped each year.Krakauer's devastating narrative of what happened in Missoula makes clear why rape is so prevalent on American campuses, and why rape victims are so reluctant to report assault. Acquaintance rape is a crime like no other. Unlike burglary or embezzlement or any other felony, the victim often comes under more suspicion than the alleged perpetrator. This is especially true if the victim is sexually active; if she had been drinking prior to the assault - and if the man she accuses plays on a popular sports team. The vanishingly small but highly publicized incidents of false accusations are often used to dismiss her claims in the press. If the case goes to trial, the woman's entire personal life becomes fair game for defense attorneys. This brutal reality goes a long way towards explaining why acquaintance rape is the most underreported crime in America. In addition to physical trauma, its victims often suffer devastating psychological damage that leads to feelings of shame, emotional paralysis and stigmatization. PTSD rates for rape victims are estimated to be 50%, higher than soldiers returning from war. In Missoula , Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of several women in Missoula - the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them. Some of them went to the police. Some declined to go to the police, or to press charges, but sought redress from the university, which has its own, non-criminal judicial process when a student is accused of rape. In two cases the police agreed to press charges and the district attorney agreed to prosecute. One case led to a conviction; one to an acquittal. Those women courageous enough to press charges or to speak publicly about their experiences were attacked in the media, on Grizzly football fan sites, and/or to their faces. The university expelled three of the accused rapists, but one was reinstated by state officials in a secret proceeding. One district attorney testified for an alleged rapist at his university hearing. She later left the prosecutor's office and successfully defended the Grizzlies' star quarterback in his rape trial. The horror of being raped, in each woman's case, was magnified by the mechanics of the justice system and the reaction of the community. Krakauer's dispassionate, carefully documented account of what these women endured cuts through the abstract ideological debate about campus rape. College-age women are not raped because they are promiscuous, or drunk, or send mixed signals, or feel guilty about casual sex, or seek attention. They are the victims of a terrible crime and deserving of compassion from society and fairness from a justice system that is clearly broken.
What We Talk about When We Talk about Rape by Sohaila Abdulali
Call Number: 364.153 Abdulali
After surviving gang-rape at seventeen in Mumbai, Sohaila Abdulali was indignant about the deafening silence that followed and wrote a fiery piece about the perception of rape--and rape victims--for a women's magazine. Thirty years later, with no notice, her article reappeared and went viral in the wake of the 2012 fatal gang-rape in New Delhi, prompting her to write a New York Times op-ed about healing from rape that was widely circulated. Now, Abdulali has written What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape--a thoughtful, generous, unflinching look at rape and rape culture. Drawing on her own experience, her work with hundreds of survivors as the head of a rape crisis center in Boston, and three decades of grappling with rape as a feminist intellectual and writer, Abdulali tackles some of our thorniest questions about rape, articulating the confounding way we account for who gets raped and why--and asking how we want to raise the next generation. In interviews with survivors from around the world we hear moving personal accounts of hard-earned strength, humor, and wisdom that collectively tell the larger story of what rape means and how healing can occur. Abdulali also points to the questions we don't talk about: Is rape always a life-definining event? Is one rape worse than another? Is a world without rape possible?
A False Report by T. Christian Miller; Ken Armstrong
Call Number: 364.1532 Miller
On August 11, 2008, eighteen-year-old Marie reported that a masked man broke into her apartment near Seattle, Washington, and raped her. Within days police and even those closest to Marie became suspicious of her story. The police swiftly pivoted and began investigating Marie. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie--a bid for attention. Police charged Marie with false reporting, and she was branded a liar. More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault. Describing the crime to her husband that night, Galbraith learned that the case bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. She joined forces with the detective on that case, Edna Hendershot, and the two soon discovered they were dealing with a serial rapist: a man who photographed his victims, threatening to release the images online, and whose calculated steps to erase all physical evidence suggested he might be a soldier or a cop. Through meticulous police work the detectives would eventually connect the rapist to other attacks in Colorado--and beyond. Based on investigative files and extensive interviews with the principals, A False Report is a serpentine tale of doubt, lies, and a hunt for justice, unveiling the disturbing truth of how sexual assault is investigated today--and the long history of skepticism toward rape victims.
Things We Didn't Talk about When I Was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco
Call Number: 364.1632 Vanasco
Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides--after fourteen years of silence--to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person. Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act? Jeannie interviews Mark, exploring how rape has impacted his life as well as her own. Unflinching and courageous, Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships--a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions, push towards deeper understanding, and continue a necessary and long overdue conversation.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Call Number: BIOGRAPHY MILLER
She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral--viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time. Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways--there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life. Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing.
Black Box by Shiori Ito
Call Number: Libby/Overdrive
In 2015, an aspiring young journalist named Shiori Ito charged prominent reporter Noriyuki Yamaguchi with rape. After meeting up for drinks and networking, Ito remembers regaining consciousness in a hotel room while being assaulted. But when she went to the police, Ito was told that her case was a "black box"--untouchable and unprosecutable. Upon publication in 2017, Ito's searing account foregrounded the #MeToo movement in Japan and became the center of an urgent cultural and legal shift around recognizing sexual assault and gender-based violence. As international outlets covered every step of her story--even documenting it in the BBC film Japan's Secret Shame--this book launched a societal reckoning. At the end of 2019, Ito won a civil case against Yamaguchi. With careful and quiet fury, Black Box recounts a broken system of repression and violence--but it also heralds the beginning of a new solidarity movement seeking a more equitable path toward justice.