That would be speculation. it’s not the media’s job to speculate. It’s also not very plausible. She came out of that bathroom sobbing with vaginal tearing. Her friends were prevented from being able to go in after her by Roethlisberger’s thug bodyguards. She immediately went to the cops. The bodyguards (who were off-duty cops) have been suspended themselves. The cops say the girl was too drunk to be able to understand what was happening to her or to describe it accurately. If she was that drunk, it was rape (and please don’t give me a line of crap about Roethlisberger being drunk too. He wasn’t so drunk as to be incapacitated, and he wasn’t the one who came out of the bathroom sobbing and with internal tearing).
Because it’s irrelevant, even if true. It’s completely immaterial to whether he raped her this time.
He DID do something wrong. He violated the League’s conduct policy. That’s what he’s suspended for.
The reason people think he’s a rapist is because of the actual evidence (not o mention the two other allegations).
Even if he didn’t rape her (which I think he probably did) his behavior was still sleazy and skeevy enough to be a violation of the NFL conduct policy.
I’m sure it’s not worth arguing about, especially since coincidentally, most Steelers fans think he’s obviously being railroaded, and most others do not.
But I’m a sucker for low-hanging fruit, so I’ll just point out that
only contains two points and each contradicts the other.
I know the grounds for this suspension are less concrete because the case was never brought to trial, but that’s not really the issue here. If you fail a couple of NFL drug tests, you get suspended regardless of whether or not the police charge you with possession. That’s the NFL’s rule. This brings the decision making into a murkier area, but having read the articles everything else it does sound like something wrong (not just questionable, but seriously wrong) happened.
People are concluding he did something wrong based on what’s been reported about the events of that night. They’re not assuming he did something wrong just because the NFL suspended him.
This is not Bens first go around with this. He is being sued in Civil Court by an earlier victim. If she gets to enter this episode in the case ,he is in trouble.
Stink Fish Pot, basically, what I want to say is that a lot of people (not necessarily here) seem to be making the argument that what someone does ON the field should count more than OFF of it. And IF, (note I’m saying IF), he were guilty, then his skills shouldn’t matter. That’s what it comes down to.
Is Ben a rapist? I don’t think we can say for certain? Am I still going to root for the Steelers? Absolutely – one man does not a team make. But would I allow any child of mine to wear Ben’s jersey? Hell no. He may not be a rapist, but he’s definitely a sleaze.
And Jackknifed Juggernaut, where did you hear that she only made the accusations a few days later? Hello, she went right to the policeman (the same one who had taken a fan photo with Ben earlier that day!), and he was heard bitching about it as he took down her statement. It’s been all over the news – the guy quit! Where have you been?
gonzomax, to be fair, the earlier case was obviously bullshit. That doesn’t mean THIS one wasn’t, but if you read the facts about that one, it completely falls apart.
I didn’t say that she made the accusation a few days later. I said that she quite possibly regretted it afterward- like maybe once she found out he had lots of money and was defending another rape accusation. It’s amazing to me how people can say with a straight face that the woman in the Tahoe incident was obviously lying to get money, but then still use this as a premise for concluding guilt in the Georgia case. The former accusation was obvious bullshit and shouldn’t even be mentioned when assessing the Georgia incident. If anything, it should be noted when attempting to gauge the veracity of the Georgia accusation.
Exactly, and the reports are from a clearly biased media, which essentially forced the NFL to suspend him.
Sorry, but there’s no contradiction there unless you beg the question. The fruit only seems low-hanging when you’re wearing those glasses.
So if he was drunk and she wasn’t, your opinion would be that she raped him?
In any case, they were both drunk so each is equally responsible for what happened, unless someone can provide any evidence that he forced her, coerced her or tricked her. And since the actual investigators that spent a month trying to come up something that would produce a charge couldn’t find enough evidence, I can’t see how anyone else can.
Who gives a shit about anybody’s opinion? By definition, if she was drunk, as you say she was, she didn’t consent, which you say she did. If she consented, she wasn’t drunk. It’s just a matter of what the words mean. You can pick one or the other, not both.
By your logic, he would have been wiser to immediately file a police report claiming that she raped him. Since he was drunk, he couldn’t possibly have given consent.
I also think he probably did, and if so I really wish he had been charged, tried, and convicted.
However, the question nobody seems to be answering is what do we actually KNOW he did that he should be suspended for. What is the “bad behavior”?
Roethlisberger apparently denied having sex with the woman and denies giving her any alcohol whatsoever. So… what did he do?
His lawyer was asked this very question. He said that while Roethlisberger did not provide any alcohol to the woman, his mistake was simply being in the vicinity of someone who was extremely drunk.
So people are going to be suspended now for being near someone who is extremely drunk?
I haven’t even offered any opinion about what happened or didn’t happen. I’m pointing out what is a very simple truth about the scenario you proposed. It is a legal impossibility to consent while drunk. Your hammering on my fictional motivations is hilarious and completely irrelevant.
You said she was drunk; you said she had a consensual encounter. You can talk about “my” logic and “my” opinions all you like, but they’ve got nothing to do with anything and don’t exist anywhere but your fevered black and gold hallucinations. The fact of the matter is that you accidentally proposed a scenario where Ben Roethlisberger committed a sexual assault.
That’s ridiculous, it is not legally impossible to consent while drunk. It just depends on how drunk, you can’t get consent from someone who’s passed out/blacked out drunk but if just being drunk was enough to invalidate any consent I’ve raped and been raped several times a year for the past decade.
Yes, that is true. If you aren’t impaired enough to render you incapable of consent, you’re capable of consent, obviously, but I don’t see where that gets us, because it’s not like “drunk” is a binary state of being. When we say she was “drunk” we aren’t saying she’s had two drinks and is a little over the legal limit, I am assuming. We’re saying her ability to make decisions is impaired by her intoxication.
I don’t recall anyone claiming that she did. She made the claim shortly after the incident. Are you suggesting that the timing of rape accusation determines whether or not it actually occurred? I’m not saying that this is factual, but if someone was going to frame someone for rape, they’d probably want to file the report immediately while the evidence is still “fresh”.
Don’t you find it somewhat odd that charges weren’t filed even after a month of information gathering, detailed accounts by the girl and her friends, and a prosecutor who publicly (and unprofessionally) voiced his disgust for Ben? I think that there should be a good explanation for all of that, before anyone can conclude that a sexual assault occurred. Why would the girl abruptly ask the prosecutor to not proceed? And if he really believed that an assault occurred, he still could have proceeded. From everything that we’ve heard so far in the media, this would be slam dunk to go to trial. Just look at the police report. Why didn’t it happen?
And for those of you that think that my fandom is clouding my judgment, I can assure you its not. I would be defending Tom Brady too. This is way more serious than any sports team allegience. I would wholeheartedly support having Ben thrown in jail if he went to trial and was convicted, as I mentioned in the OP. But I refuse to have a conviction-by-media force me to believe that something criminal happened when the facts suggest that there could be more to the story.
I would consider going to the police right after it occurred a strong sign she wasn’t okay with it. You think she her plan was, while drunk, to have sex with him so she could frame him? That is the most likely scenario to you?
I don’t find it odd at all. The girl didn’t want to be a public spectacle. The prosecutor didn’t have enough evidence without her to get beyond a reasonable doubt.