Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: ink-stained wretches Did the Times Take a Sympathetic Stance in Story About Texas Child Rapists? 
  
 In a disturbing story in yesterday's Times, writer James McKinley recounted the tale of the alleged rape (caught on film) of an 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, Texas, and the eighteen young men and teenagers implicated in the crime. But some of McKinley's flourishes disturbed the women bloggers at Slate XX and Jezebel. Like this, for example: 
  
  
  
 "It's just destroyed our community," said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. "These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives." 
  
 That's the first quote in the story, one that expresses sympathy for the alleged child rapists. 
  
 The basics of the crime are this: The child was lured to a friend's home by a 19-year-old, where several boys forced her to take her clothes off and sexually assaulted her, threatening to beat her if she resisted. When a relative turned up, the group dragged her through a back window and took her to a mobile home in a rough neighborhood called the Quarters where the assaults continued. Portions were recorded on cell phones, which the perpetrators later showed off at school. When a classmate told a teacher about what she saw, law enforcement became involved. 
  
 Here's the next quote from the Times story, also from Harrison: 
  
  
  
 "Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?" said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. "How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?" 
  
 "Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands ... said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months," explains McKinley. "They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s." These quotes disturbed some readers, especially when combined with a portion of the writer's intro where he noted: 
  
  
  
 The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act? 
  
 "As if they were tricked into gang raping a child," Jezebel's Margaret Hartman seethed. "Any attempt to gain emotional distance on rape by transferring just a tiny portion, just one percent, of the blame onto the victim is an absolute moral wrong," wrote Slate's Libby Copeland. 
  
 "We are very aware of and sensitive to the concerns that arise in reporting about sexual assault," a Times spokeswoman told us by e-mail. "This story is still developing and there is much to be learned about how something so horrific could have occurred. But nothing in our story was in any way intended to imply that the victim was to blame. Neighbors' comments about the girl, which we reported in the story, seemed to reflect concern about what they saw as a lack of supervision that may have left her at risk." 
  
  
  
 "As for residents' references to the accused having to 'live with this for the rest of their lives,' those are views we found in our reporting. They are not our reporter's reactions, but the reactions of disbelief by townspeople over the news of a mass assault on a defenseless 11-year-old." 
  
 Go and read the piece. What do you think? Was the Times playing into the community's feeling of protection for all of its young people, not just the victim? 
  
 Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town [NYT] 
  
 Reporting on a Gang Rape in East Texas [Slate XX] 
  
 Media Blows It With Pathetic Gang Rape Coverage [Jezebel] ||||| CLEVELAND, Texas — A meeting Thursday night that was billed as a way to discuss concerns some have about the investigation into a series of alleged sexual assaults on an 11-year-old girl turned into a forum that many used to blame the girl police contend is the victim of heinous attacks. 
  
 Many who attended the meeting said they supported the group of men and boys who have been charged in the case. Supporters didn't claim that the men and boys did not have sex with the young girl; instead they blamed the girl for the way she dressed or claimed she must have lied about her age — accusations that have drawn strong responses from those who note an 11-year-old cannot consent to sex and that it doesn't matter how she was dressed. 
  
 Other people in this small town about 40 miles northeast of Houston said earlier this week they were outraged by the attacks. The age of consent in Texas is 17 and ignorance of a girl's age is not a legal defense. 
  
 "She's 11 years old. It shouldn't have happened. That's a child," Oscar Carter, 56, who is related to an uncle of one 16-year-old charged in the case, said in an interview earlier in the week. "Somebody should have said what we are doing is wrong." 
  
 Police say the girl was sexually assaulted during several attacks last year. Authorities have arrested 18 people, including two of Cleveland's star high school athletes and adults with criminal records. They face assault and abuse charges. 
  
 Authorities began investigating in December after a friend of the girl told a teacher he had seen a lurid cell phone video that showed the girl being raped. 
  
 Police investigators determined it was recorded inside an abandoned mobile home on the city's northern outskirts. The girl told investigators she was raped on Nov. 28, first at a house near the mobile home and then at the trailer. 
  
 Indictments in the case allege that before the Nov. 28 attack, the girl also was assaulted on Sept. 15 and Oct. 25. Each of those times, at least two individuals were involved. 
  
 Thursday's meeting was led by Quanell X, an activist prominent in Houston's black community. He told the audience of more than 130 people who had packed a small community center that the gathering's goal was not to criticize the girl but to question the investigation by police, although he did question why she didn't report the attack to authorities herself. 
  
 "I did not come here this evening to jump on an 11-year-old girl," he said. 
  
 The activist, who was invited to speak by a local pastor, said he was concerned that only young black men had been arrested. He said he believed some of those arrested were guilty but that others were not. He told those in attendance that if they were questioned by police about the case that they should only talk to police with a lawyer present. 
  
 During the meeting, Quanell X also asked people to donate money to the defense funds for two of those arrested in the case. 
  
 After the meeting, many in attendance told reporters that the girl had consented to the sex. 
  
 "She lied about her age. Them boys didn't rape her. She wanted this to happen. I'm not taking nobody's side, but if she hadn't put herself in that predicament, this would have never happened," said Angie Woods, who lives in Houston but grew up in Cleveland. 
  
 The AP was unable to locate the family this week, but her mother has told The Houston Chronicle that Child Protective Services placed the girl in a foster home with restricted access to her family. ||||| T 
  
 he paper of record has come under fire for a story about the alleged gang rape of an 11-year-old girl by 18 young men in Cleveland, Texas. A feature on the gruesome tale notes the victim's clothes and makeup, and includes quotes from some local residents who seem to blame the victim while worrying about the well-being of the alleged attackers. The Times' coverage is being called "sloppy, slanted," and "pathetic." Is the Gray Lady to blame? 
  
 Yes, this is bad journalism: The Times piece is "sloppy journalism," says Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. It focuses on what the 11-year-old victim "must have done to provoke" her assailants rather than "what her multiple assailants apparently did." That's "outrageous" and "sickening." The Times aspires to "balanced journalism," but with this story, the vast majority of the quotes offer an unbalanced, unsympathetic perspective. 
  
 "The New York Times' sloppy, slanted child rape story" 
  
  
  
 The Times seems to sympathize with the suspects: "It's hard to believe that anyone's first concern would be about how the men will live with what they did," says Margaret Hartmann at Jezebel. But the article includes a quote about how the alleged rapists will "have to live with this the rest of their lives." Who cares about them? 
  
 "Media blows it with pathetic gang rape coverage" 
  
  
  
 No, the Times accurately reflected the community's reaction: The story, and the controversial quotes, are simply portraying the community response to the crime, says Francisca Ortega at the Houston Chronicle. Journalists just report the facts, regardless of whether they agree or disagree. While I personally wouldn't blame the victim, it seems some in the community do, and that's what the story reflected. The Times merely quoted them. It didn't endorse their view. "This is the world we live in," and "we shouldn't sugarcoat the fact that this world exists." 
  
 "The appropriate place to rant about rape in a news story" |||||
Student:
Ever since 18 men and boys were busted in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl, there have been hints of a “blame the victim” mentality emerging—and last night, some residents crossed from hints to explicitly blaming the 11-year-old girl. “She lied about her age. Them boys didn't rape her. She wanted this to happen. I'm not taking nobody's side, but if she hadn't put herself in that predicament, this would have never happened,” said one resident. Many others who attended a town meeting also told reporters the 11-year-old had consented to sex with those accused, the AP reports via the Houston Chronicle. The meeting was supposedly held to discuss concerns about the investigation, but many in attendance used it to voice claims that the 11-year-old was to blame because of the way she dressed, or to hypothesize that she lied about her age. Others opposed those views, noting that Texas’s age of consent is 17, and that even if the girl did claim to be older, an 11-year-old simply cannot legally give consent. Quanell X, the Houston activist who led the meeting, said he “did not come here this evening to jump on an 11-year-old girl,” but also questioned why the girl didn’t report the attack herself. Earlier, a New York Times story on the attack sparked controversy—click for more on that here and here.