By Liam FordTribune reporter4:23 p.m. CDT, May 17, 2013

Three teenagers face sex assault charges after they raped a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint and posted a video of the December attacks on Facebook, prosecutors said.

Scandale Fritz, 16, Kenneth Brown, 15, and Justin Applewhite, 16, were all ordered held in lieu of $900,000 bail in a hearing today before Criminal Court Judge James Brown, said Cook County state’s attorney spokeswoman Tandra Simonton. The three were charged as adults.

The assaults took place about 3:30 p.m. Dec. 15 in Fritz’s home in the 400 block of West 60th Place in the Englewood neighborhood, according to Chicago police records.

The girl had gone to Fritz’s house on 60th Place that afternoon to talk to him, and when she went inside, she saw Brown, with a gun in his pocket, prosecutors said. Fritz took the girl downstairs in the house and after she declined his demands for sex, he raped and sodomized her, prosecutors said.

Brown and Applewhite came down to the basement, and Fritz demanded the girl have sex with the other two boys, prosecutors said. At first, the girl refused, but she saw that Brown had a gun in his pocket, and so they sexually assaulted her and forced her to perform sex acts on them.

Fritz videotaped the sex acts, including Brown holding a gun during sex, and all three of the boys shouting gang slogans, prosecutors said. All three of the boys are visible in the video, with Fritz entering the frame when he turns the camera toward himself.

The day after the assaults, the girl told someone about the attacks, and a police report was made and the girl was treated and examined at a hospital. On Dec. 17, the video was posted on Brown’s Facebook page, and then on all three boys’ Facebook pages, prosecutors said.

Fritz admitted to investigators he made the tape, prosecutors said.

Fritz and Brown, also of the 400 block of West 60th Place, are co-defendants in a previous, unrelated robbery and aggravated battery case, according to prosecutors. Brown also is on 18 months probation in a Nov. 28, 2012, unlawful use of a weapon case, prosecutors said. Brown is due back in court on that case May 22.

Applewhite, of the 500 block of East 80th Street, has no publishable criminal background, prosecutors said.

The three are due back in court June 6.

It was not known why it took until May to charge the three teens.

lford@tribune.com
Twitter: @ltaford