USA Today published an article earlier this month about the reported rape rate reaching a 20-year low, with partial credit to the masses—they’re no longer blaming victims for being raped.

“You don’t see the nightmarish trials of the 1960s where a woman’s reputation would be brought into question and people would conclude she deserved it,” said Michael Males, a senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco.

But if courtrooms are immune—and they’re not—the Internet is teeming with mudslingers. Like most things in the 21st century, victim blaming has gone digital.

Jeff Norman, a blogger at the Huffington Post, commented on Jacyln Friedman’s article, “We are all Polanski’s Victims, and We All Deserve Justice,” to suggest that maybe Samantha Geimer was instructed to lie or exaggerate when she testified that Roman Polanski drugged, raped and sodomized her.

On the same subject in the Atlantic’s online edition this week, author Gore Vidal mused whether he was “going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of.”

After Chris Brown was arrested for allegedly beating his girlfriend Rihanna, parents and professionals were alarmed at how many teenagers defended the singer’s behavior, often at Rihanna’s expense. On Facebook, one girl wrote, “she probably ran into a door and was too embarrassed so blamed it on Chris.”

And, alas, instead of asking why twenty students laughed and took photos while a group of men raped a 15-year-old girl for two-and-a-half hours at her high school homecoming, she’s being chided for underage drinking.

Police have arrested five suspects in connection to the rape (though not the bystanders—California law doesn’t prosecute a person for witnessing a sex crime if the victim is older than 14). The suspects, including three juveniles, are being tried as adults and prosecutors have said they’re seeking life sentences.

Found shirtless and unconscious under a cement bench outside Richmond High School, the victim was so severely beaten she had to be airlifted to the hospital in critical condition. But rape apologists are undeterred and accusing a teenage girl of inviting 10 or so men to rape her, at times with a foreign object.

Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon.com plucked some comments posted in response to an AOL article about the attack from the blog Helpful Comments.

From Tbigpimpins:

wait wait wait…..she was drinking prior to this? hmmm. im not sayin its her fault or she deserved this or anything but shes 15 and drinking outside on a bench by herself in a dress….as much as people want this to be a perfect world, its not. what she was doin in the first place was asking for trouble. if your not gunna be smart about the choices you make, im not gunna feel bad for what happens

From Simzillyjp:

Group drinking. That says it all. Booze will bring out the best in people. (yea go have another one) Perhaps the boys are not all to blame. The young lady had one too many.

And, finally, STARFOXRWING:

Is she hot?

Trial court, reader comments—the defense is asking the same questions. Was she wearing a low-cut dress? Was she walking alone? Was she drunk? Was she asking for it?

Even an educator at Richmond High School who asked not to be named in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle  said, “I think she can be a little naive, and she’s been harassed by guys in the past who took advantage of her when she tried a little too hard.”

Attractive, kind and—God forbid—wearing a dress to your homecoming? Watch out. Of course no one deserves to be raped, they’re saying, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t bring it upon yourself.

Why weren’t the security cameras at the high school working? Why did the administration ignore a large crowd gathering in the dark courtyard where the assault took place? Why did students call their friends to come over and watch?

How would the conversation change if we gave all our attention to those questions instead of how much vodka the victim drank? Because—guess what—teen drinking is another issue entirely, and bears no relevance to why two dozen or so students watched a group of men gang-rape a 15-year-old at her high school homecoming.

Maybe then 30 senators wouldn’t have voted against Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) anti-rape amendment—in response to another gang-rape—that is now at risk to be stripped from the defense appropriations bill. Maybe neither gang-rape would have happened. And, just maybe, neither victim would feel like she brought it upon herself.