A 16-year-old Seattle-area girl recently used MySpace.com to identify four males who allegedly raped her.
Sergey Davniy, 18, and three 17-year-olds were charged last week in King County juvenile court with second-degree rape.
Police say that the girl and a female friend arranged to meet the males via the Internet. The friend went home, leaving the 16-year-old with the males.
Prosecutors told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the males got the girl drunk and took turns raping her in the backseat of a car. The men reportedly took the girl home where she told her mother that she had been assaulted.
Investigators had the girl go back to the MySpace page where she met her alleged attackers. She identified two of the males from the site. Detectives used this ID to get a search warrant for Internet messages exchanged between the suspects. One of the messages included in the charging papers reportedly has language in which one of the suspects brags about the assault.
The four males were arrested last month in separate SWAT raids.
Investigators say that the oldest suspect Davniy admitted to the assault. He also reportedly implicated the other three males.
Prosecutors have not decided whether to request that the suspects be tried as adults.