Losing My Perspicacity September 13, 2024

Author

Julie DiCaro
September 12, 2024

Good morning and happy Friday! Welcome to another Free Friday edition of Losing My Perspicacity.

So I opened up my laptop tonight and recoiled in horror. It appears that Beehiiv has launched a new “newsletter builder,” and nothing is where I’m used to finding it. So please bear with me if I completely muck up the formatting here. If you’d like to get LMP in your inbox five days a week, please consider supporting independent journalism by upgrading to a paid subscription. We’re all supposed to be boycotting Starbucks for contributing to the RNC, anyway.

Today: The woman suing Deshaun Watson for sexual assault will meet with the NFL soon; A mixed bag of emotions for WADA this week; What is going on over at the Secret Service? Shannon Sharpe admits to lying to us all; AND THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!

Let’s go.

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Deshaun Watson’s accuser to meet with NFL
 

I’ve written about Deshaun Watson and the latest sexual assault allegations against him quite a bit this week, but I thought it was worth mentioning that the woman who filed the lawsuit against him, claiming that he forcibly raped her in 2020, will be meeting with the NFL within the next two weeks, according to her attorney, Tony Buzbee. Buzbee represented more than 20 of Watson’s previous accusers.

“We intend to interview with the NFL in two weeks,” attorney Tony Buzbee said in a statement issued to PFT. “This coming week however I have to go to the Coast Guard hearings in South Carolina regarding the Titan submersible implosion because I represent a victim’s family from that. When I return I intend to make my client available for interview along with two individuals who spoke to her immediately after the assault. I also have video to share that will be pertinent.”

Of course, the fact that the accuser (I genuinely hate the fact that we call an accuser “a victim” in every other criminal context except when a famous man is accused of violence against a woman) is meeting with the NFL (and reportedly has witnesses and a video pertinent to her claim) doesn’t guarantee that Watson will be suspended again. However, given that the league is meeting with Watson’s accuser as part of the investigation into the latest allegations, coupled with head coach Kevin Stefanski’s comments that he did not know about this particular allegation before Monday, leads me to believe that the claims in this lawsuit are something neither the league nor the Browns had heard before.

[Sidebar: Kevin Stefanksi, like Bruce Arians, is one of those coaches who is always cited as being “great for women,” because he, like Arians, has put women on his staff. That’s commendable, but part of being “great for women” means not ignoring allegations of sexual assault and pretending its business are usual. Arians never had a bad word to say about Antonio Brown, who had been accused of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault, by three different women. Likewise, Stefanski saying he never considered not playing Watson should remove him from the “great for women” category forever. I know the bar is on the floor when it comes to the NFL, but come on.]

The reason it matters whether or not the team knew about this allegation previously is that, when Watson signed his mega-deal with the Browns in 2022 and restructured his contract in 2023, the Browns included a section that lists all the ways Watson could default on his contract. One of those ways is if Watson is “reasonably believed by (the Browns) to have engaged in personal conduct that materially and adversely affects or reflects on (the Browns) or has his contract terminated for engaging in personal conduct that reasonably judged by (the Browns) to materially and adversely affect or reflect on (the Browns).” That provision expressly excludes “ the specific facts disclosed to Club in writing pursuant to Paragraph 42.”

Paragraph 42 reads, in pertinent part: “

Players hereby represents and warrants …Player has not engaged in conduct which could subject him to a charge, indictment or conviction of any such offense, and (iii) no circumstances exist that would prevent Player's continuing availability to the Club for the duration of this Contract.”

If you haven’t read the details of what Watson is accused of, I included a block quote from the lawsuit in a previous post. While there has been no charge or indictment against Watson, his availability could still be affected by the outcome of the NFL investigation. Erego, this lawsuit seems to satisfy the conditions of Paragraph 42, which would mean Watson may have defaulted on his contract. That, of course, only matters if the Browns are looking for a way out. Given how the Haslams have handled this entire thing so far, I’m not sure they are.

As for Watson, he’s “strongly” denied all the allegations against him and will play on Sunday.

Before we move on, I wanted to address a question I got from a man on Threads this week. He asked, very sincerely, I believe, “Why aren’t these women going to the police?”

There are many reasons victims of sexual assault don’t go to the police. I didn’t tell anyone about my sexual assault for years afterward, and I certainly wasn’t going to sit in a room with a bunch of male cops while they asked me what I was wearing and why I left a party, drunk, with a guy I didn’t know. Don’t forget,

refused to indict Watson, and the jury that found Derrick Rose not liable for sexual assault (even though he admitted he did not have the victim’s consent) posed for pics with him afterward. Our fantasy that the criminal justice system usually works for victims is just not true. According to RAINN, for every 1000 cases of rape, 310 are reported to police, only 50 lead to an arrest, and a minuscule 28 will result in a felony conviction.

Here’s what I wrote about my own rape back in 2013:

At the time, keeping my rape a secret seemed like a no-brainer. What was I going to tell the police? That I got drunk and left a party with a guy I didn't know? What would they think of me? Would they even prosecute a case like that? What was I going to tell my parents? I certainly hadn't behaved in the manner befitting a good girl, a college honors student, from a small Midwestern town. I was certain I'd be told that what had happened to me was my fault. The police would laugh at me, or worse, not believe me. Better just to keep quiet.

A big part of the problem is that jurors are socialized to be suspicious of women’s accounts from the beginning, and “Why did you wait so long to come forward?” is a big stumbling block for many cases, because our society does a terrible job educating people about the trauma of sexual assault. But what I got from distance from my assault was perspective, therapy, and, above all, courage. It’s no easy thing to accuse a man of rape, and it’s even more daunting when he has the force of an NFL team, fan base, agents, and lawyers behind him. And consider how Browns fans embraced Watson and the charges against him by mocking the victim.

We should not be penalizing victims for needing years to recover before seeking justice.

WADA gets good and bad news

The World Anti-Doping Agency got a mixed bag of news this week, with their hand-picked “independent prosecutor” clearing WADA of any wrongdoing in the ongoing saga of 23 Chinese swimmers. If you’ll recall, during the COVID epidemic, WADA accepted China’s explanation of “food contamination” when 23 of its swimmers tested positive for a banned substance, allowing some of those swimmers to compete in both Tokyo and Paris without any sanction. The special prosecutor also didn’t weigh in on whether or not the Chinese swimmers got away with doping, so it was basically a huge win for WADA all around, though they selected the “independent” prosecutor themselves.

However, news also broke this week that WADA intentionally shut down a path to innocence for banned Russian skater Kamila Valieva.

When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear embattled Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency, the leader of that organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote.

No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport went on without it. What impact the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later become the focal point of a contamination case involving a group of Chinese swimmers who were not sanctioned after testing positive.

That information was sent to the AP by someone familiar with the case, which begs the question, “Is there an informant inside WADA?”

In this case, WADA connected the Russians with the well-respected scientist, who conducted an experiment to see whether traces of a cut-up tablet of the banned drug Temozolomide, known as TMZ, could cause a positive test. The answer, according to the people with knowledge of the case who spoke to AP: yes.

This would have fit with one of the defenses the Russians were using for Valieva: that her grandfather made a strawberry smoothie for her, possibly using the same cutting board or utensils he used to cut TMZ tablets for himself. Using this defense, if Valieva could prove her grandfather made the smoothie and she drank it within a certain time frame before her positive test, there was a chance she could’ve received a “no-fault” positive due to contamination that would have resulted in a less-stringent sanction.

Just four days ago, WADA announced an investigation into whether the US Anti-Doping Agency was in compliance with WADA’s code. USADA and WADA have been firing shots across the bow at each other since the USADA came out guns blazing about the Chinese swimmers ahead of the Paris Games. For their part, WADA has suggested that, if the US is found to be non-compliant, it could affect the US’s hosting of the 2028 and 2034 Olympics Games.

The Secret Service steps in it again

In a deleted X post from Wednesday, the Secret Service reportedly included the 19 9/11 hijackers in the 9/11 death toll. I mean, technically, they were correct in the number of people who died, but we probably shouldn’t be honoring all the lives lost on that day.

Bloody hell, people. The non-homicidal maniac death toll is actually 2,977 victims.

The post has, obviously, been deleted.

It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up

I don’t know what’s more embarrassing for Shannon Sharpe here: that he publicly broadcast a sexual encounter on Instagram Live, or that he actually tried the ole “I was hacked” defense before finally admitting that he doesn’t know how his phone works.

(Disclaimer: I am in no way encouraging anyone to listen to that whole…thing. The audio is just there if you want it. I felt I had to listen, for journalism, and I’ve never regretted anything so much in my life.)

He was working on something vigorously, that’s for sure. But I think it’s weird to call a woman “my team.”

"Obviously I am embarrassed. Someone that is extremely, extremely private and to have one of your most intimate details – the audio – heard for the entire world to hear, I’m embarrassed for a number of reasons," Sharpe said.

***

"I threw my phone on the bed, engaged in an activity," he said. "I did not know IG live. I’ve never turned IG live on so I don’t know how it works and all of sudden my other phone started going off."

Now that we’ve discussed it, let’s never, ever talk about this again.

Dammit, Tua has GOT to learn to slide

Just awful to see, and he was down for over a minute before he walked off the field with medical staff and into the tunnel. Given Tua’s history with concussions, this was terrifying to witness. Even more upsetting, that was Damar Hamlin’s chest he put his helmet into, meaning that entire thing could have gone really badly.

Finally

At last count, Taylor Swift had directed more than 400,000 people to vote.gov, encouraging them to do their own research about the issues that matter most to them.

I know this meme has been done many times, but I’m a sucker for it, so here it is again:

Meanwhile, Trump is screaming his head off that “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”

Heh.

There won’t be a newsletter on Monday for personal reasons, but I’ll see you all on Tuesday. Have a great weekend!

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