Parents of Steubenville Rape Victim Want 'Everything Over'

Lawyer says victim's parent are not "out looking for heads."

ByABC News

March 18, 2013, 12:16 PM

March 18, 2013  -- The parents of the 16-year-old victim at the center of the Steubenville rape trial are faced with a new grand jury investigation, but indicated today they do not want additional people charged in the case because they want "their little girl to have her life back."

"The family just wants everything over. That's their desire," the victim's family's attorney Robert Fitzsimmons told ABCNews.com today. "They were hoping that the charges had been completed and that justice was served yesterday and they hope that they can move on with their lives."

The lawyer spoke a day after Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced that a grand jury would convene in mid-April to investigate whether there could be additional indictments or charges in the case.

"The family is not the type of people that they're out looking for heads," Fitzsimmons said. "They never have done that. The just want things that were wrong to be addressed and justice to be served the way it has been. They want their little girl to have her life back and their family to have their life back."

Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'lik Richmond, 16, were both found delinquent -- the juvenile court equivalent of guilty -- on Sunday of the sexual assault of an intoxicated 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio.

Both were sentenced to at least one year in juvenile jail and could be held until they are 21. Mays was sentenced to an additional year for a charge related to distributing nude images of a minor. Attorneys for both of the defendants said they plan to appeal.

DeWine said the case is not over. Investigators identified people who attended the party where the assault took place. Most were interviewed, but others refused to cooperate for various reasons.

Additionally, owners of a home where one of several parties took place that night were interviewed, as well as dozens of school officials, including more than two dozen football coaches from Steubenville High School.

Advocacy groups have called for additional charges in the case and for more people to be held legally responsible for what happened.

Experts say it's unlikely that any of these other people could be held legally responsible for the events of the night or their actions--or lack of action, in some cases--in the days and months that followed.

There is an Ohio law that makes it a crime not to report a felony, like rape, but the law is rarely used.

"That's a law that's rarely used in any state, I would believe, but certainly rarely used in Ohio just because it's very hard to prove that someone actually knew a felony was occurring," attorney and professor Ric Simmons told ABCNews.com. "We also don't usually prosecute crimes of omission. Not doing something is not usually illegal."

Simmons is a law professor at Ohio State University and a former assistant district attorney in New York.

"As a general rule, you don't prosecute people for failure to report. It's a very oppressive state if you're constantly reporting on others," Christo Lassiter, a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati's College of Law, told ABCNews.com. "It's not good morality to stand by and watch someone get raped and take a picture, but it's not something you prosecute as law."

Simmons reiterated that it would be difficult to bring charges against the other people at the party who may have witnessed or heard something.

"You'd have to actually know that a rape occurred or some crime occurred," he said. "If they heard second hand or people were telling jokes and so on about this, I think it would be really hard to meet the standard required for the state of mind to say that someone actually knew that a crime occurred."