"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.
Regardless of what did or did not happen in that back room, I am appalled by this entire situation.
ReplyDeleteI second Maret and the whole post. I'm a HUGE Steelers fan, but this is just disgusting and sad and horrifying.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Isaac.
ReplyDeleteAnd glad to hear about the resignation.
Couldn't agree more. I am, in fact, more disgusted by his actions than Tiger Woods'. Big Ben ordered a round for "All my bitches." Tiger didn't get a fallen-down-drunk 20-year-old in a private room away from her friends. He used completely consenting (albeit kind of slutty) women. There's a difference here between Tiger's actions (embarassing, but not criminal in the slightest) and Big Ben's actions (not the first such encounter, disgusting, and borderline criminal). After getting the facts, I didn't believe he was guilty at all in the first accusation (the Lake Tahoe incident, in which the accuser sent an e-mail to a friend soon thereafter about how she was going to have "a little Roethlisberger"). After getting the facts about this accusation, never has my opinion of a QB dropped so fast. Even if things went as Ben said: He's a despicable human being.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I'm reading a lot about rape this week. I read this earlier this week and there are some similarities. Separate the girl from her friends and keep them away from her until whatever is going to happen, happens. Police and other authority figures don't want to get involved.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/38671/test-case-youre-not-a-rape-victim-unless-police-say
The article is worth reading.
It's a hugely upsetting situation and, sadly, not one that's all that rare. Glad to hear the police officer resigned but he's also not all that rare. It's all just gross.
ReplyDeleteThe facts of the case add up to Ben being reprehensible whether or not he's a rapist.
Thanks for linking to that article. It was very disturbing but I'm glad I read it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll second what patricia said, and what Dave Dameshek (also a huge Steelers fan) said on Simmons' podcast: the Rooneys need to send Ben elsewhere, immediately.
ReplyDeleteSending him somewhere else just creates a problem somewhere else. The problem is him, not where he is.
ReplyDeleteThat seems to be one of the lessons of the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal . . . but it seems highly unlikely that all football teams would agree not to hire him if the Steelers fire him (look at Michael Vick, and that was post-jail, not post-firing). So what's a possible solution to the problem of him, if criminal violations don't send him to jail?
ReplyDeleteNot that I think this is realistic, but for people to turn their backs on him. Obviously the lifespan of this kind of thing is a few years -- Kobe seems to be doing fine; people practically deified Michael Jackson -- but if people in bars didn't reward his behavior, he wouldn't have anybody to practice it on.
ReplyDeleteI also can't belive that the description of the events shouldn't be enough to cause the bodyguards to be fired. They were police troopers! Or does the fact that they were off duty mean that they have no additional moral or legal culpability for aiding in a crime?
ReplyDeleteAs a Pittsburgh export, and a Steelers fan, I've naturally been following this with an increasingly vibrant clenched jaw. I'm furious with him, and fed up -- the bad example he set with his motorcycle abuse was enough for me to be kind of over Big Ben, but this is just insane.
ReplyDeleteMy facebook discussion on the subject has yielded some pretty awful viewpoints from the locals -- "Society says he's innocent, and that's good enough for me," "Pittsburgh suffers when the Steelers lose, so let's move on...." It's been a disheartening week.
While trading him does send the problem somewhere else, it accomplishes a lot in the way of letting him know that these things don't just slide away. His move would be under some pretty heavy scrutiny, and the shame of having to hang up your Steelers jersey isn't negligible when your life is your Steelers jersey. Also, we could use the draft picks, and I'd rather root for a franchise in reconstruction than cheer on a guy that I wouldn't want coming near... Well, anyone.
That's about where I am too, Paul -- I know that there's no way the Steelers could get "fair value" for his football talents in a trade, and I just don't care. Whether they trade him for a bag of kicking tees or just cut him, there need to be ramifications here, and the Steelers need to show that they are not going to tolerate this type of person, particularly as their most famous national representative. Like Dameshek said, I'll accept Chaz Batch at QB and 2-14 if that's what it means to just be rid of Ben.
ReplyDeleteLet me be clear: I don't want to make him someone else's problem - Isaac and the other commenters above are absolutely right about that. But I want him gone from the team I love -- if I had my absolute druthers, he'd be gone from the NFL entirely, and the smart attorneys in the Rooney family would find a way to void his contract over his disturbing pattern of conduct.
The slight silver lining thing to me of reading these very dark cloud cases is that both of them highlight something of a "buddy system" which didn't exist as far as I could tell when I was the age of all these women. I got told plenty about campus cops versus real ones, about which areas were ok and which were touchy, about taking back the night, designated drivers, etc., but no one ever said "make sure, going in, that someone knows where you are and has your back" which seems to be both a valuable lesson (if obvious in hindsight) and one that is being put into practice in a routine way. Didn't prevent things in these specific instances, but I am happy to think that it probably does in less extreme cases, and yay.
ReplyDeleteI'll be completely shallow to ask: Since when did Milledgeville become suburban Atlanta? It's a good two hours away. I've been there and it's the sticks. That's the thing I've wondered about since this story broke, "What the hell was he doing in godforsaken Milledgeville?" Which is known locally as, "Where the loony bin used to be." There's still a mental health facility on the grounds, but it's not the "State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum" as it was called when it was created.
ReplyDeleteSurely Big Ben didn't go on a pilgrimage to the grave of Flannery O'Connor?
Watts, my understanding is that he owns property near either Lake Sinclair or Oconee, or near the Ritz-Carlton property that was built in the area in the past few years. Pretty random.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with you that Milledgeville isn't suburban Atlanta by any stretch, I will speak up for the city and say it isn't as godforsaken as you make it out to be... While it's a smallish college town, it definitely has more going on than other neighboring towns. I went to grad school there and grew up about an hour away in a tiny town that really would qualify as the sticks. I suppose it depends on your perspective. Sorry if that sounds like I'm being overly sensitive, but when you grow up in rural Georgia, you feel a certain obligation to stick up for the beauty of small-town life.
I didn't necessarily mean sticks in a derogative way, just that when I was there, it felt really rural and didn't seem like a likely place for someone from Pittsburgh to party. And I shouldn't have said "godforsaken" It wasn't the right word to say "felt way out of the way." Like, Milledgeville seemed nice enough, and if you were doing something with GC&SU or one of the other institutions I could see why you'd go there, but it seems like a weird destination otherwise. I didn't know about the Ritz coming to town; that's cool.
ReplyDeleteAnd, hey, I'm living in Athens now - not exactly a thriving metropolis itself. At least Milledgeville seems prettier than Athens.
I'm originally from Knoxville, TN, and I can't think of a whole lot of reasons anyone would go there, except for something connected to the University of Tennessee or if they had the misfortune, like me, of being born there.
I'm sincerely sorry I offended you.
He has a house there on Lake Oconee. I'm actually laughing at the characterization of Milledgeville as "surburban Atlanta." Like, it must be described that way to give it a little more gravitas, or to head off the "What the hell was he doing in godforsaken Milledgeville?" question, or something.
ReplyDeleteHey, no worries. I totally see what you mean and I'm sorry if I made you feel bad about making me feel bad. (Now the Southerners have apologized for having differing opinions, so everything is right with the world). :)
ReplyDeleteSweet tea, anyone?
ReplyDelete