Yeah. If you've actively given consent, you need to also actively revoke, simply because people can't read your mind.
If there had been an experienced Dom in the room, he likely would have explicitly checked on her being okay multiple times, simply because it's so common that people can't bring themselves to actively say "no", or use a safeword, or do anything other than let the situation continue.
This was however a bunch of drunk kids. You can't actually expect them to be smart enough to do that. The real mistake was to even start.
However, so far the evidence suggests that she was at least at some point into the idea of a "locker room gangbang"
(Which is a super typical fantasy, and absolutely nothing to ashamed of.) If so, it's extremely understandable that that's where the situation went.
Unfortunately it wasnt actually fun in reality, which honestly is to be expected. She then apparently wanted to get out but was too scared (and drunk and also very likely just confused because she's probably never been in a similar situation) to do anything other than to go along with was happening. She extremely understandably felt very abused afterwards, and probably very much feels like it was rape, because that's an easy way to label that feeling.
Problem is, if she never said or did anything to signal how she was really feeling inside, I don't think you can set the legal standard for consent at "you should have guessed it was possible she wasn't actually having fun anymore".
From what's been described of the sex, it sounds kind if like what you'd expect: a bunch of kids acting out porn. Yeah they shouldn't have done all that without specifically asking if she was having fun, but again... I wouldn't expect even inexperienced adults to navigate those situations properly. This isn't even a guy thing, women also struggle to ask their partners about their actual comfort zones.
To me, this is basically "a bunch of kids were young, drunk and stupid, and then someone got hurt". The equivalent of "a bunch of drunk kids got into a car and then someone died". Doesn't mean you can't convict anyone, but I don't see them as anything other than dumb kids.
This is the kind of stuff that even sober adults often struggle with. The real mistake was a bunch of drunk kids thinking that doing anything beyond a normal one-night stand was somehow a good idea. Probably this is the situation where you could actually say "kids these days have seen too much porn".
To me the real takeaway message here is "birds and bees don't cut it, if you really want kids to be safe, you need to talk to them about how to safely engage with risky sexual fantasies".
As someone with quite lot of experience with kink, lot of women are really into the
idea of group sex and rough sex, but in practice it takes work and experience for that to be safe and fun. Most kinksters know very well that you shouldn't play drunk, because it can so easily go wrong, even among experienced adults.
It's also extremely normal that a woman, even a sober, experienced adult kinkster, might just go along with a bad experience because the momentum of the situation feels inevitable and it's just emotionally difficult and scary to use a safeword. In a situation where there clearly wasn't any talk of safety or boundaries, or an established mechanism for stopping things if necessary, it's a recipe for disaster.
This situation is exactly why kink scenes have a lot of rules and established best practices.
It wasn't inevitable that this went bad, but it was definitely likely. I also agree that very likely at least one of the guys didn't even really want to be there, but felt pressured to participate, and now ending up charged with assault because of something you yourself wanted to just get out of would likely also be traumatizing as hell.
I also want to say that "when things got out if hand we stopped and got her out of there" sounds to me like kids that are not bad, but dumb.
Now, we don't know (at least not yet) what that means exactly, but it sounds to me like the guys DID realize that she wasn't having fun at some point, and then stopped, which is exactly what normal people would and should do.
The problem is the "got her out of there" part. Again, if there had been an experienced Dom in the room, they would have gone into aftercare mode. Re-establish feelings of safety and comfort, validate her feelings of fear and hurt, tell her no harm was intended and that she is now once again completely safe, apologize for any mistakes you made, maybe discuss what happened to the extent that she wants to.
Instead, they very likely kinda panicked and dumped her into the street like a bunch of dumb guys... drunk, alone, confused and emotionally and physically hurting.
That's how a person goes from feeling hurt to feeling abused and assaulted.
(And if laws were written the way I'd want, doing that would be some kind of a crime. But they're not.)
...that went a bit long I guess
I want to emphasize that I don't think it's possible to actually know what happened at this point. Which means I also don't know, I'm just speculating on one possible string of events, mostly because I feel like there's much more to talk about here than just what we know for sure happened.
It's an interesting, difficult case.