LYING PRESS: Boys accused of sexual assault of Twin Falls 5-year-old plead guilty. [archive] “Prosecutors and police said a sexual assault did occur, but many of the details — the knife, that it was a rape, sharing the video, even the defendants’ ethnicities — were wrong.” (The boys are third-world refugees, a detail buried in the story.)

Not a rape? Decide for yourself. Here’s a transcript [archive] of an interview with the victim’s father:

Stranahan: “So you’ve seen that video?”

Victim’s Father: “Yes.”

Stranahan: “Wow, that’s… I… I hadn’t heard that.”

Victim’s Mother: “I haven’t seen it. I just can’t.”

Victim’s Father: “With her anxiety and with her condition I did not allow her to see that. I did not watch the whole thing, like I said, I watched about thirty seconds of it. . . .”

Victim’s Father: “Thirty seconds showed them in the laundry room, they pulled my daughter around, pushed her up against the wall, pulled her pants off, he dropped his pants, he was trying to get her from behind, you know, they only… no, for the boy that was trying to do it he was, you know, he was only seven to nine years old, so not a lot of… he didn’t know what he was really doing, as you’d expect. My daughter didn’t really, was trying to fight him a little bit, she finally got away, pulled her pants up, ran around to the side of a corner, ran inside a washing machine, hunched down, shaking in fear, while he danced around with his pants down, laughing at her, pointing at her, with all the other boys – you could hear them in the background, doing the same thing – and that’s all I watched. Because after that I was just… man, I don’t want to see any more of this. If I do, I’m gonna do something I shouldn’t do.”

Stranahan: “Could you tell how long the clip was? You only watched thirty seconds, but did you see how long it was?”

Victim’s Father: “I didn’t check. I know it was a couple minutes.”

Stranahan: “A couple minutes.”

Victim’s Father: “I know there was a lot more that happened that was told to me by the prosecutor who had watched the video. More after that, you know, he went back to her, tried doing the front, he, um… oral sex with, you know, oral with her, he shoved it in her mouth…”

Victim’s Mother: “Which is considered a rape.”

Victim’s Father: “He peed all over her in her mouth, all over her body, her face, head… you know, totally defiled her, I mean…”