http://news.sky.com/story/1141158/rape- ... eets-found

They'll be able to buy shares soon...

Surely, if she is still 15, it is statutory rape anyway? Unless the Twitter account stated that she was over 16, I suppose...

unless all the defendants deny any sexual contact

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This is a disaster.

Without knowing the contents of the tweets, it's a bit hard to judge exactly what's going on here. She could have tweeted something that says or implies that it's all a mistake and the accused are innocent, or that the judge already thinks they're guilty, or any number of other things. Some of them are 'procedural' issues and some of them would throw genuine doubt on the guilt of the accused.

It's a bit harsh to suggest a 15 year old girl would know that what she said on twitter was effectively admissible evidence, but the bare fact is that it is exactly that. Things said in public don't have the same value as things said under oath but they can certainly bring the notion of 'beyond reasonable doubt' into play.

I have no way of judging what we've got here - anything is possible from, as I think Am says, of a group of people walking free after committing a very nasty and violent crime all the way to a group of actually innocent people being saved from a terrible ordeal, possible incorrect imprisonment and the taxpayer being saved a shedload of money.

Without knowing what she tweeted and what the legal officials decided that meant, it's pretty hard to draw any conclusions as to what would have happened in the trial had it gone ahead.

On the other hand, I've met several women who were raped or sexually assaulted and have never been able to lead a normal life and/or spent a long time in therapy.

Oh, absolutely. I'm not belittling the nature of the crime. One of the tragedies of this case is we will now never know the truth of the matter, so both possibilities I mentioned exist. I'm just pointing out that we don't know the whole story here and I have a feeling there's more to it than we've been told.