It is fair to say Antonio Brown presents as a jackass.
Brown, for those of you lucky enough not to be aware of him, is an immensely talented professional football player who recently clowned his way out of a job with the Oakland Raiders.
After weeks of made-for-TV drama that included frostbitten feet, his inability to find a helmet that both suited him and conformed to league standards, wiretapping his coach, and the Raiders ultimately voiding more than $29 million in contract guarantees, essentially putting Brown in the position of having to earn a paycheck week to week, he posted a message on Instagram asking the team to release him.
So they did. And Brown was quickly signed by the NFL's Death Star, the perennially excellent New England Patriots, which caused some conspiracy theorists to claim this was the plan all along and that Brown had acted during his time as a Raider in order to force his release, move in with hero Tom Brady, and win a Super Bowl.
It seems dubious that Brown (and Bond-villain agent Drew Rosenhaus) would have actually wanted the Raiders to void his contract. Football is a violent game where anyone's career can end at any time. The $30 million the Raiders had guaranteed is a lot more than the $15 million Brown could potentially earn as a Patriot if he triggers all the incentive bonuses. But some people believe that's what happened.
Brown's antics blew the lid off a morally suspect business that takes itself very seriously. It made for good TV, and Brown reveled in playing the over-the-top character he'd created for himself (with the help of a seriously good social media team).
It was fun to watch him exasperate his coaches and troll a certain kind of sports fan, the sort that wants the players to shut up and sacrifice their bodies for the all-important team.
Brown might have been a selfish idiot, or he might have been a reckless businessman. None of us really know how self-aware he is or how intentionally he created his persona, but his provocations often teased up some uncomfortable truths about how the football industry treats young men as chattel. (Who doesn't like a circus? Maybe the animals that are exploited for our entertainment.)
And if you didn't want to think about those things, you could always hate-watch a really good player.
That's changed now. Last week Antonio Brown was credibly accused of rape by Britney Taylor, who he met in college and who he subsequently hired as a trainer.
Taylor's accusations are credible because she said he did it. Her story fits with what we know about rape. Brown knew her; they had a relationship, and she can produce sad and disturbing text messages that allegedly came from his phone. She deserves to be presumed innocent, to be presumed a victim. That's where we start.
Brown is due this consideration as well. But because he's being accused in a civil suit instead of a criminal case--which means he could lose money but not liberty--his guilt need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. If the civil case proceeds to trial (which it might not; there's always the possibility the two sides will agree to settle) the question will be one of who is more believable.
On the other hand, to prove rape in a criminal trial, the prosecution must convince the court the the offender ignored the victim's unwillingness to engage in sex or that the victim was too physically or psychologically impaired to give consent.
Rape and sexual assault are unusual crimes because sex is not intrinsically criminal. Whether sex becomes a crime is largely dependent on the psychological states of those involved. So it isn't hard to understand why someone who feels victimized might pragmatically choose the avenue of redress that seems more promising.
It's easier to win a civil suit than it is to send someone to prison. Maybe that's a reasonable compromise, a way to hedge toward justice.
It is possible Taylor is evil and opportunistic, that she's trying to get money from Antonio Brown. This is what Brown and Rosenhaus would like us to think, that they are being blackmailed by a gold digger and that they have a moral responsibility to stand up to her to protect men everywhere.
Right. Because men need protecting. Especially rich and famous men.
There have been men unjustly accused of rape. There have been men unjustly convicted of rape and sent to prison. Human history is largely a catalog of injustice and atrocity.
And there are women abused every day. You know them, even if they haven't told their stories.
Which most of them haven't. Even in this #METOO era there are plenty of disincentives to coming forward. Studies suggest that 85 to 90 percent of rapes aren't reported; it's probably higher than that. There's really no way to know.
It stands to reason that rapes involving strangers are reported at a much higher rate than others. A lot of women probably don't even consider their rapes rape; they understand how the world works, what the expectations and trade-offs are.
Rape is a crime that usually occurs behind closed doors, with no witnesses other than the principals. Most rapes occur between "friends" or at least acquaintances. Someone the victim trusts enough to be alone with, in a house or apartment. Someone in the contacts on the victim's phone.
The plain fact is that if you are a man, and you can get a woman to trust you, you can probably get away with raping her.
None of this helps with the specific case involving Antonio Brown and Britney Taylor. It's not our business really, it's just another sordid distraction, another scrap of sparkling trash to catch our attention for awhile: the jackass and the gold digger in a steel cage death match.
But I don't find this stuff amusing anymore.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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Editorial on 09/15/2019