"BEN WOULD NOT DO ANYTHING TO RUIN HIS REPUTATION": On March 4, something happened between six-foot-five, 241-pound NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and a 20-year-old sorority girl in the back room of a bar in suburban Atlanta. She says he forced himself on her over her objections. He told the bar's owner (according to the bar owner) that he was "messing around" with the girl, but stopped when she "slipped." There were only two people in that room, and my opinion about whose is the more credible story about what happened there should make no difference to you.
I just wanted to point out what the witness statements suggest about what happened before Roethlisberger and the girl went into the back room. According to multiple statements by the girl's friends -- helpfully collected over at The Smoking Gun, Roethlisberger bought shots in a VIP room of the bar for a number of women, including several sorority girls who he knew were under 21. Everybody seems to agree that the girl in question was so drunk that she had trouble standing up (remember, Roethlisberger himself told the bar's owner that he stopped "messing around" with her when she "slipped"). One of Roethlisberger's bodyguards -- an off-duty Pennsylvania state trooper -- then summoned the girl to an empty back room, where Roethlisberger soon joined her. When the girl's friends, recognizing that no good can come of going into a back room with a stranger while blind drunk, tried to get into the room to collect their friend, another Roethlisberger bodyguard, also a Pennsylvania policeman, blocked the door (according to at least two witness statements). When they said their friend was too drunk to be in the room alone with Roethlisberger, the security guard said (according to the same statements) that he didn't know what they were talking about, and continued to block the door. The friends sought the bar owner's help; he refused to open the back room to them, telling them that Roethlisberger wasn't going to do anything to hurt his reputation. Ten minutes after entering the back room, Roethlisberger left the room, and the friends soon found the girl crying.
I have no problem whatsoever with a celebrity employing security to keep overzealous fans, detractors, or curiosity-seekers at bay. I get that a person can attain a level of fame that makes it hard to have a meal, a drink, or an ordinary conversation without a paid buffer. When that security detail is used to prevent some sorority girls from looking after their falling-down-drunk friend -- giving Roethlisberger the benefit of the doubt, as a way of insulating a potential conquest from the reason of clearer heads, which a pampered athlete might disparage as cockblocking -- it crosses from protective to predatory. I want to be absolutely clear that I am not saying that Roethlisberger raped that girl -- I don't know what happened in the room, and I'm not up for a debate about consent and alcohol right now. I am saying that there is something morally wrong with using one's paid muscle to separate the weakest doe from the protection of the herd. Isn't this at least as bad as carrying a loaded gun in one's sweat pants?
And while we're on the topic, glad to hear that Sgt. Blash -- the policeman who called the accuser a "drunken bitch," complaining that "women can do this. It's bullshit but … we've got to do a report. This is b.s. She's making shit up" -- has resigned. I'm not sure if Blash made those statements before or after he and the other officers got their pictures taken with Roethlisberger's arms around them.
