OT: Notre Dame alum blasts school for sexual assualt/rape by football players

Submitted by Leaders And Best on

Notre Dame alum wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about why she will not be rooting for Notre Dame to win the National Championship: two current players on the team are alleged to have committed sexual assualt and rape, and the school has promoted an environment to attack the victims in order to protect the football team.
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2012/12/04/why-i-wont-be-cheering-for-old-notre-dame/

UofM-StL

December 7th, 2012 at 7:50 PM ^

And the player is only implicated by a random commenter. And he's disputed by another guy two comments later.

The point is, the accusation is far from official. I'd like to think that this site would not spread unfounded criminal rumors about student athletes. Direct people to go to Google and find it for themselves? Sure. But I'm not comfortable with the name being posted here.

OmarDontScare

December 7th, 2012 at 8:05 PM ^

This mentality is what led to situations like we saw at PSU and the Catholic Church. So, it's fair that we know the name of the girl who was assaulted and lost her life but it's not fair to know the name of the alleged assaulter?

I'm not saying he's guilty but is it really that horrible to know his name?

UofM-StL

December 7th, 2012 at 8:16 PM ^

Not at all. In fact, in most cases like this the victim's identity is also protected, and I don't know enough about this case to know why it's different here. And if a protected victim's identity were revealed in rumormongering on this site, I would fight just as hard to get it removed.

BoFan

December 7th, 2012 at 8:11 PM ^

There is no reason to censor publlic information.  Transparency, which PSU could have benefitted from greatly, is almost always better and creates a tougher environment for abusers.  In this case given the public information, it's even more silly to apply censorship.

BoFan

December 8th, 2012 at 1:07 AM ^

...on news and blog boards all naming the same name...often by students.

If you can google it, it's public.

One supposed foreign news site.

OK, maybe he's a Prince of a guy...but I still think this censorship is a Sham....  boy

Edit:  1000s of comments all naming the same guy.  From Google:

       About 11,500 results (0.26 seconds) 

justingoblue

December 7th, 2012 at 8:07 PM ^

if you can find a source with some journalistic credibility (Chicago Tribune, South Bend Tribune, ESPN, ect.) willing to name the player in question, feel free to go ahead and repost. An anonymous comment on a newspaper site just isn't credible enough to post with an accusation of rape.

hart20

December 7th, 2012 at 8:24 PM ^

But if you think that I'm lying about knowing him, you can go back and check when the story first broke, I said then that I knew him and hey, I still know him now. Besides, what's my incentive to lie?

I will say, that my view of the situation has changed though, from then to now.

Fake Jim Harbaugh

December 7th, 2012 at 7:23 PM ^

In 2011 Kelly said:

You can see the players that I recruited here, you know who they are. We've had one class … that I've had my hand on. The other guys here are coming along. But it's a process. It can't happen overnight. They're getting there. We're making good progress."

link

The "process" is having some unfortunate side effects. Weis and Kelly deserve each other.

jscbus

December 7th, 2012 at 6:57 PM ^

Welp, the whole fan base will have empathy for the author/victims when they get raped (whether severely or minorly) to a pumpkin pulp by Bama. I like to think this author is with me in "building the suspense". 

UofM-StL

December 7th, 2012 at 7:09 PM ^

I can't fault the university itself too much for not acting on these accusations, but that's only because the investigation mentioned appears to have been so mis-managed that it didn't turn up evidence where it likely should have.

The thing about this story that really makes my stomach turn is the reported flood of text messages from teammates of the accused to alleged victims warning them not to go to the police. My jaded self is prepared to accept that there are some evil people that will commit rape and sexual assualt, but that there's also a great number of people who would willfully cover up such an act is still sickening.

enlightenedbum

December 7th, 2012 at 7:12 PM ^

Two points:



1) This is a societal problem where we do not take the rape of women anywhere near seriously enough. It's a hard crime to prove, obviously, but there are some overly harsh burdens.

2) If the accused is powerful or perceived as powerful (a member of the football culture at ND, a politician, Wall Street exec, Julian Assange), this problem is even worse and at the investigatory level it's even less likely the authorities will take the woman seriously.

It's why I'm rooting for Alabama, yeah, but we should zoom out a little bit.

My apologies to the mods if this gets too close to political/sociological.

ChopBlock

December 7th, 2012 at 7:34 PM ^

At the same time, though, people DO use sexual assault allegations to bring down powerful figures. Think about the guy at Syracuse. I don't remember all the details of his case, but didn't it turn out somebody was just trying to smear him? I reserve the right to be completely wrong, by the way. The point is that sex is something that so easily gets turned into a power play, by both those who abuse, and those who falsely allege abuse. Sexual assault is such a damning charge because it's easy to claim, ruinous to someone's reputation, and you don't need to produce a dead body to get people to believe you.

NOTE: I'm not saying that we shouldn't take allegations with the utmost seriousness, nor should we pin blame on the accuser unless we're absolutely certain that they're lying. My only point is that we shouldn't pass judgment too quickly just because they're public figures and we get pissed when public figures get away with atrocities, simply because they're famous.

ChopBlock

December 8th, 2012 at 1:16 AM ^

But nor should we rush to judgment. And the "usual" does exist because it's more often true than not. But when we rely on our preconceptions of the "usual" and the "normal" (true or false as they may be) and allow that to shape what we believe prior to examining the facts of one particular situation, that's the very definition of prejudice: pre-judicial.

Withholding presumptuous judgment of the alleged perpetrator (e.g. before s/he's had their day in court) and having a genuinely sympathetic ear for the alleged victim... those things are not mutually exclusive. Think about it this way: the vast majority of people who get booked for domestic violence are in fact abusive and generally reprehensible, right? And yet Josh Furman, IIRC was originally booked for just that. Now as partisans, we all wanted him to get his day in court, to see what would happen before we blasted the kid. And in this rare instance, he got the charges basically wiped from his record because it turns out that the whole thing was just one big fiasco. And we were right to do so.

Now it didn't follow that we were accusing whoever called the cops of lying (IIRC they just wanted Furman to leave or something), but just because we took a wait-and-see attitude toward Furman didn't imply that we disbelieved the other side.

Stuff is complicated, especially in regards to sexuality and the law. Especially when they're both blacked out. Especially when the dynamics of a night get real weird real fast. Especially when...

You get it. We SHOULD absolutely take a stand on things. But until as we know enough to do so, we need to be sympathetic listeners while withholding judgment.

enlightenedbum

December 7th, 2012 at 8:06 PM ^

I thought that was implied by Wall Street exec.   But yeah.

EDIT: WIth regards to the OJ point, that's a good thing to mention.  Especially with the Jovan Belcher thing just last week.  It's really a violence against women issue, not just sexual assault.

SalvatoreQuattro

December 7th, 2012 at 8:30 PM ^

 Much depends upon which group you belong to. If you are feminist rape isn't treated seriously enough. If you are black you are not given a fair chance. The fact is that both women and black men have been treated unjustly in rape cases.  

The burden SHOULD be high to prove such an accusation. As you point out proving rape is difficult. Disproving it is even harder. Who is to say what was consensual sex and what was rape?      If we liberalize the burden we risk imprisoning many more innocent men. There are quite a few "girl who cried wolf" out there who will falsely accuse someone of rape  for reasons of revenge or financial gain. 

Justice demands that we take such accusations seriously enough that we thoruoghly investigate it. But justice also demands that the burden of proof should be exacting for you can destroy a man's life by falsely convicting him of such a despicable crime. 

 

ziggolfer

December 7th, 2012 at 7:16 PM ^

I know a person from my hometown who was interviewed by the school on this incident. In his opinion, the school covered up this incident. He also said they did so a few times while he attended ND. 

 

He also feels ashamed of his school and no longer supports them athletically. 

LSAClassOf2000

December 7th, 2012 at 7:21 PM ^

The Chicago Tribune highlights something that I  find very, very disturbing actually - (LINK)

"Notre Dame police could have turned the case over to the county's special victims unit, which is trained to handle sex-crime investigations. However, officials did not do so, and a campus police log shows the matter was assigned within the department."

It's an article that was written only a short time after all this, so at this  time, no one had been named, but to me, there is something just unconscionable (and really rather shady, in my estimation) about the school not handing this investigation over to trained investigative personnel. 

If these are indeed the lengths ND would go to in order to keep the football program's nose clean,  then perhaps it is better that we won't be playing them much longer. Nobody wants to scoop that off the FieldTurf, if you will. 

eecslaw0914

December 7th, 2012 at 7:35 PM ^

Every team has these issues from time to time.  A certain burnette loving kicker was accussed, with similiar facts as here, and people I know (U of M profs, certain daily writers) seem to think that was swept under the rug.