Slane Castle Image: Gordon Flood (Flickr/Creative Commons)
On Saturday an Eminem concert was held to a crowd of 80, 000 at the famous Slane Castle in Ireland. During the event, a teenage girl was photographed kissing a man while he sexually touched her before performing oral sex on the man in broad daylight amongst thousands of onlookers.
By Sunday afternoon some fucking creep uploaded three pictures of the incident onto Twitter. It was not long before these photos began trending worldwide with the hashtag #slanegirl. The images were circulating on Twitter for over 24 hours before finally being taken down. On Facebook a “Slane Girl” Facebook page received 3000 likes too many before being taken down under a violation of its terms of service.
The reactions to the event sickened me. Fucking douchebags worldwide are calling the guy in the pictures a ‘hero’ while the girls is being slut shamed and mocked. The girl’s identity has been discovered (I’m not going to share her name here) due to someone finding her Instagram where she lists her age as 16 (Irish law states that child porn is the indecent exposure of anyone under the age of 17). Of course, no one cares about finding the guy in the incriminating photos, only the girl, so these assholes can continue shame her even more. Um, so the guy doesn’t get condemned for showing his penis to everyone? Why do these assholes always make it seem like it is the woman’s fault?
The Irish police have confirmed the girl is underage and are now thankfully launching an investigation into the incident. This means that everyone who tweeted or retweeted the pictures may face charges of distributing child pornography. So far, according to her Twitter, one person has been asked to present a report to the police.
Meanwhile, the girl in the photos is reportedly in hospital and has had to be sedated. Twitter and Facebook are using Microsoft’s anti-child pornography software PhotoDNA to filter and prevent the pictures from being uploaded. A Twitter spokesperson said it did not tolerate “child sexual exploitation”.
It remains to be seen how the authorities will deal with this, especially considering how widely circulated the pictures have been on social media. Will everyone one who retweeted it be investigated? Only time will tell.