On the night of the attack, the victim left the homecoming dance at about 9:30 p.m., before it ended, and walked to the back of campus to call her father to pick her up, detectives say. That's when someone invited her into the notorious courtyard. (She knew him?)

The group of about a dozen boys and young men was already well into 2 gallons of vodka. After they liquored up the girl with brandy, they proposed sex, according to several accounts by friends of those who were there but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The girl said no. Some of the men placed her on one of the two red cement benches set alongside the main brick building of the school and said they were going to have sex anyway, according to the accounts.

"They had her down on the bench and the bitch tried to kick 'Tweak' (one of the men) in the nuts," said one young man, who said he had a first-hand account of the attack from Smith but was afraid of being named. "He went off on her, started hitting her, and then it was on. They pulled a train (a gang initiation-style rape, one after the other) on her."

What ensued was 2 1/2 hours of beatings and raping, at times with a foreign object. The scene attracted onlookers, some calling others over by cell phone, and eventually there were as many as 10 men or boys sexually assaulting the girl while another 20 looked on, laughing and snapping pictures. Teachers and students were searching last week for at least one video that many said was filmed of the attack.

The rape finally stopped, around midnight, after students at a house down the block heard of what was going on and called police. The girl was found, semiconscious, beneath a picnic table. "Her face was purple and blue and she wasn't moving when they finished and ran," said Eraclio Lopez, 23, who lives nearby and ran over when the police cars rolled up. "I guess those kids thought what they did was tight, was cool. But it was terrible."

The girl was released from a hospital, but her recovery has only begun, police Lt. Mark Gagan said. "This was a barbaric crime, and I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that so many watched and didn't report it," Gagan said. "That poor girl will have a lot of healing to do."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/31/MNR41ACRGU.DTL#ixzz0W8tLGTS7