Another slow day at ESPN allows sexual assault complaint by football player to qualify as "news"

Yesterday I decided to check out the ESPN website to see what they still regard as relevant sports “news.” The home page was full of non-news about the empty off-season lives of mostly NBA players, with the odd newsworthy story about athletes with too much time on their hands served warrants for their arrest for things like armed robbery to recover large losses from  card games. But there was another story hidden away on the NFL homepage about something concerning a civil case placed in superior court in Los Angeles, a complaint for damages involving sexual assault, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligent hiring, training, supervision and retention.

Certainly a typical workplace complaint by a woman against a male colleague or supervisor, right? Wrong. It gets worse: the principle “victim” of this incident is an unnamed black male NFL player, the defendants a middle-aged white female, two flight attendants, United Airlines and witnesses and airline functionaries who failed to take the player’s complaint seriously and deliberately tried obstruct his grievance. According to the ESPN account of the complaint,

The player and another passenger in the same row made four complaints to flight attendants that the woman was making "unwanted sexual advances" before she was moved to a different seat. The two men are suing United, the lawsuit says, because the airline refused to give them the name of the woman, the flight attendants and potential witnesses, and because the airline failed to follow policies to respond to sexual harassment and assault on the Feb. 10 flight.

According to the lawsuit, the men first alerted flight attendants that the woman was disruptive and belligerent and appeared to be intoxicated. They notified the flight attendants again when the woman made sexual advances toward the NFL player, massaging his knees and thighs. More than an hour into the flight, the woman's advances intensified, the men allege, and she allegedly grabbed and groped the player. Flight attendants again were notified.

The woman continued her advances, the lawsuit says, pulling off the protective face mask the player was wearing and grabbing his genitals. At that point, the player jumped up from his seat and complained in front of the entire plane that the woman was touching him. The player went to the rear of the plane and again notified a flight attendant. That's when the woman was removed from the row, according to the lawsuit.

Some notes on this case. First of all, just when did she become and how intoxicated was this woman? Was she clearly “drunk” when she boarded the plane? If so, why was she even allowed on the flight? If she became drunk during the course of the flight, why did flight attendants keep plying her with “complimentary” alcoholic beverages? Or did she sneak aboard her own stash, which should have been against airline policy? Whatever of those scenarios played out, there was clear negligence on the part of the airline and the flight attendants for not taking action to stop it. 

Secondly, the woman’s behavior was clearly sexual in nature and ”unwanted” in context. Now, we can undertake to determine her motivations; perhaps she was “sexually aroused” being the company of a professional football player—or perhaps she had some other ulterior motivation, such as a simple desire to harass or making a gendered “political statement” to see how he “liked” it.  But as we have been told many times by the other side, “no” means “no” regardless of the circumstance; just because it was done for everyone to see didn’t make it more “acceptable.” It is probably useful to point out that this wasn’t a “he said-she said” incident in a private area, but in a public venue with witnesses. It also useful to point out that the player does not claim to have become physically assertive in trying to stop her, probably because he suspected he would have been accused of assault.

It appears that the player’s initial complaint to flight attendants wasn’t taken seriously because, after all, this was a black male football player and besides being “big and tough,” they are “sexually aggressive” and he probably “instigated” the contact and probably “liked” it anyways. Or he was probably “exaggerating” what was going on; white women don’t go grabbing at black males' genitals on an airplane, even if they are drunk. Maybe black women do that. There were three rows of passengers on the opposite aisle who likely had an opportunity to see what was happening, and at least 50 passengers, according to the complaint, heard the player make his announcement that he was being “attacked” by this woman. Did they think it was some kind of joke? Did they think that the player was being “rude” or gender “inappropriate” making the accusation? Certainly the airline and its employees didn’t believe that the woman’s actions was worthy of making too much of. The national media isn't making too much of it either, judging from the fact that only outlier news media has reported this.

The law firm handling the case, Darwish, made the point that it is attempting to “shine a light on how assaults can, and are, being made on men, and not just women. This is significant because assault is assault, regardless of gender, race and physical attributes of the victim. Once these characteristics are added into the equation, the usual stigma and social stereotypes associated with sexual assaults are amplified.” It may be stated that these things are “relative,” but hypocrisy isn’t. California assembly woman Christina Garcia may have appeared on the cover of TIME as a “silence breaker” and as a “MeToo” movement maven—only she failed to break her silence on the fact that she was a serial sexual abuser herself.