Another Innocent

We're all innocent until proven guilty, even if acquaintance rape does seem to be an occupational hazard in athletics. But pro ball players are our role models, not your average Joes. We'd rather not hear about stories like this, rather not have to see them on the defensive.

The story:

A pimp sends a 16 year-old girl to visit a football player in a hotel room, an ex-Giant. An older woman who has accompanied the girl with the pimp in the car, maintains that the girl never had sex with the football player. Lawrence Taylor did give her money, yes, but the teenager returned to the car, the one with the pimp and the informant, to say,

"It was weird ... we didn't even have sex."

Not so hard to believe, but not so easy either. For the girl tells us she was raped.

So this will be another case of a pro on the defensive, and a person who manages an under-aged girl for sex is also, we assume, under investigation.

The lesson:

Sixteen, and younger, is rape bait. A thinking adult male who values his career and family life, his reputation, should not invite an under-aged teenager to his hotel room. Prostitution is illegal to protect kids, primarily, from rape. Age is one of the ways we define rape.

Even if a minor wants sex, consents fully, is sober, even signs a legal document! If the person she is consorting with is an adult, it is technically rape.

So who to believe? Did they do a rape-kit? To prove rape you need to show force (except with kids), DNA, and proof that there was sex. When a victim goes to an emergency room or to the police, it is law in most of the 50 states to administer a rape kit. We'll find out in the coming weeks what happened with that.

We still need to educate professional athletes, our role models.
We could teach them, for example:

If you're paying for friends, make them adult friends. Why an athlete needs to hire a teenage friend is something to wonder about, since everyone wants to be friends with a pro. But even pros can be socially phobic, may have difficulty socializing. People have their reasons. And escorts stay under the radar, aren't likely to brag.

So we have to teach them that sex, if it's ever construed as rape, is not about bragging, it's about hurting. Unless a person has been raped, it may be hard to empathize with that. But the statistics on acquaintance rape for women and men are high. One in three for women, one in nine for men.

To be a role model, then, our professionals might begin with no under-aged escorts in hotels, no sex in the restrooms at the bar, either. If you do this, let teenagers into your rooms, it's very hard for most jaded individuals, and who isn't jaded anymore, to think that nothing has happened between you.

The weirdest thing, she says. For sure.

Defense-wise