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For all of social media's many unforeseen consequences, who would have ever thought that providing a channel for justice in the case of sexual assault might be among them? When 16-year-old Savannah Dietrich was raped by some classmates last year, her experience became even more nightmarish as the boys sent photos of the attack around the school. And to make matters worse, in June a plea deal was reached that, according to Slate, "Dietrich felt amounted to a 'slap on the wrist.' And the court had an order for Dietrich, too: Don’t talk about it, or risk 180 days in prison and a $500 fine."

But Dietrich had had enough. She did what most teenagers do these days when they have anything pressing on their minds: she took to the Internet. She outed her assailants, sharing their names on her Twitter and Facebook accounts, tweeting, "There you go, lock me up. I'm not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.” By making her story public, Dietrich has also started to rally thousands to her cause, inspiring Change.org and other petitions to drop the charges against her. After all, her rapists are the guilty parties, and they made their attack on her public. By that reasoning, she's just completing what they started.

Slate has a thoughtful analysis of the story: "But here [on the Internet] Dietrich is the editor of her own story. She has the power to delete the comments she doesn’t like and promote the ones she does. Thanks to a few brave tweets, a 17-year-old rape victim is now curating an international conversation about sexual assault in America...And she’s speaking out not only about the details of her own assault, but the ways that the justice system is failing others like her."

It's incredibly upsetting to think that these things happen, but how resourceful of this wronged teenager to turn the story around, and in a situation that was always about taking control away from her, to take it back.

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