Soccer Sex Assaults · Lewandowski · Tiger King 2
Plus: The NYT's crime coverage problems
the true crime that's worth your time
The cover for the current issue of Sports Illustrated has a terrific investigation of an alleged pattern of sexual assaults at the University of San Francisco. I went to — and dropped out of — USF, but all that happened in the late 1900s (as my nieces refer to the past century, to my increasing dismay). I don’t know any of the folks named in the piece, nor do I have any personal recollections of misconduct by any groups at the school.
That doesn’t mean that shit like that didn’t happen then — I was an older student and didn’t participate in a lot of dorm-style parties and stuff like that, so I probably just didn’t hear about assaults like the ones described in the piece. Also, though, the way society approaches assaults of intoxicated women, rape reporting, and matters like consent has evolved significantly since I was in school. That is all a good thing, but it means that it’s likely that the rape culture described in this excellent SI piece isn’t new, I was just too blind to see or understand it back then.
That said, the report — which focuses on the alleged sexual assaults committed by players on the USF soccer team — stirred some vague memories for me. Several of the attacks the story details mention a “soccer house,” and unbidden, I remember a guy in my speech class warning a young female classmate/friend of mine who mentioned plans to go to a party there, “Those parties can get crazy, if you go, bring Eve.” Did I go with her, or did I flake? I can’t remember, and now I feel uneasy.
All in all, it’s an infuriating piece, one that says that school officials were aware of assault complaints against prominent athletes — including claims against then-star Manny Padilla — but did little to punish the men. The school even commissioned a report from law firm Hulst and Handler that detailed a decade of misconduct, abuse, and attacks alleged against soccer players, but still concluded that the behavior “was not pervasive among members of the USF men’s soccer team.” It’s wild stuff. Snip:
Though most people’s knowledge of USF athletics is limited to Bill Russell and his two championships for the Dons, the school’s elite men’s soccer program has won five NCAA titles and, over the last 25 years, sent 14 players to MLS. But the current and former students posting online were now saying that players had consistently abused their status on campus. In the wake of last summer’s outcry, the school commissioned a report examining the years 2010 to ’20, released earlier this year, that “identified 11 soccer players accused of engaging in sexual misconduct over the past decade.” But the problems go deeper than what is contained in the report. SI spoke to five additional women, including Ashley, who did not speak to the USF-hired investigators but shared personal accounts from that time period of sexual misconduct or harassment by a men’s soccer player.
SI spoke to another former student who said that in 2003 she went to school administrators with concerns about men’s soccer players filming women without consent in intimate settings with their teammates. Over the years, there were several more instances where administrators were made aware of team members’ behavior. And yet, it continued.
The current and former students who spoke to SI made clear that certainly not all the players who suited up for the Dons over the last two decades engaged in abusive or harassing behavior. But their accounts point to a distinct culture of misconduct on the team that spanned three coaches, four athletic directors—though one, Scott Sidwell, was present for the majority of the time—and two school presidents. How that culture has been allowed to fester is a case study in how an elite college athletics program can turn—and stay—toxic. Even after all that came to light last summer, many of those affected say the school still isn't taking the problem seriously enough.
The piece contains some detailed descriptions of sexual assaults which many will find troubling — if you’re under mental health strain right now, it’s fine to wait and read this some other time. But if you’re up to it, the full, deeply-reported story is here. — EB
There’s a Twitter storm a-brewing about some of the New York Times’ recent reporting on crime. In multiple twitter threads, civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis called out two NYT pieces on national crime rates, starting with a piece headlined “Murder Rose by Almost 30% in 2020. It’s Rising at a Slower Rate in 2021.” That story was was for The Upshot, the NYT’s data-driven vertical (per Quartz) “designed to fill the void left by Nate Silver.” The story was by Jeff Asher, who identifies himself in his twitter bio as a “former CIA officer.” In the Times story, he writes the following:
The reasons for the rise may never be fully sorted out, but analysts have pointed to many possible contributing factors, including various pandemic stresses; increased distrust between the police and the public after the murder of George Floyd, including a pullback by the police in response to criticism; and increased firearm carrying.
The unlinked bit on criticism is what Karakatsanis started with in a Sept. 22 thread, noting that Asher is also cited in a Verge article as the person who ran a deeply troubling Palintir predictive policing program from 2013 through 2015 as an employee of the New Orleans Police Department.
Days later, the Times ran a second piece on crime-rate increases, this time quoting Asher as “a crime analyst,” and failing to mention his days-before piece penned for The Upshot, or his arguable appreciation for a pro-police narrative as a recent member of its ranks.
The Karakatsanis thread on the second story starts above. Obviously, he also comes at crime news from an advocacy angle — he makes his bias known, unlike how the Times framed Asher’s work, but he’s still arguing a side. Still, he raises some excellent points on how publications cover crime and data. For example:
It’s hard to imagine the NYT running a story on the positive impact of Facebook on society that only quotes Facebook sources, stockholders, and vendors, for example, or a story on how useful shoppers find Amazon that fails to acknowledge the labor issues and business-quashing effects the company has.
It’s weird to think that editors on tech pieces are pushing their reporters harder than editors on crime content. Maybe the NYT should consider a couple job-swap days to help shake the rust off editors and others who have — perhaps — gotten a bit too complacent in how they report and edit certain content. — EB
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When Donald Trump is allegedly firing you over sexual-assault allegations, you know you’re in trouble. That’s the dek I would have written were I reblogging “Trumpworld Begged Him to Dump ‘Predator’ Lewandowski—and He Did,” a good-sized piece from The Daily Beast on Corey Lewandowski’s departure from Donald Trump’s super-PAC.
The TDB story follows a Wednesday Politico report that quotes longtime Trump donor Trashelle Odom as saying the former Trump campaign manager and aide “repeatedly touched me inappropriately, said vile and disgusting things to me, stalked me, and made me feel violated and fearful.” Shortly after the Politico story was published, Lewandowski was replaced at “MAGA Action,” a Trump spokesperson confirmed.
From TDB:
The message from these Trump pals was clear: Please get rid of Corey.
“I said to the [former] president you could use some distance from Corey and that he’s embarrassing you,” one of the sources relayed to The Daily Beast. “He should have let go of Corey years ago, so I don’t know if he will now.”
…
It’s unclear at the moment if the twice-impeached former president had made a decision on personally cutting off contact with Lewandowski. In the past, before and during his term in the White House, Trump has stood by and kept in close touch with Lewandowski, allegation after allegation, outrage after outrage. Since the dawn of the Trump presidency, there was rarely a figure in the then-president’s orbit who was as widely despised by fellow Trump associates as Lewandowski was and, quite frankly, still is.
OK, so that “unclear” graf kind of undermines my proposed dek, but still — now we know what kind of crime it takes to get dumped from the organization: you have to assault a donor who will then “reportedly [demand] a full refund” if the alleged attacker “does not resign.” — EB
Does the world need Tiger King 2? When Netflix announced its fall slate last week, you could practically hear a cash register-style “ka-ching” when they told us to brace for Tiger King 2 which will have “more madness and mayhem,” the streaming giant said in a press release. That type of sensational verbiage isn’t the language of high-minded/prestige true crime, to be sure — but that’s fine, the true-crime tent is big enough for everyone, and I’m not fancy.
But Carole Baskin, one of Tiger King’s central figures, might have higher expectations than I do. “I wouldn’t call Eric Goode or Rebecca Chaiklin true documentarians,” the Big Cat Rescue CEO told Variety, suggesting that the second season/sequel to the blockbuster property might have been a bit…rushed.
“I know some people who have been involved in it and they were doing more filming,” Baskin said. “I assumed at some point they would come out with a Tiger King 2. It took them five years to put together the first one, so I thought it would be a lot longer.”
Netflix’s announcement video shows Baskin, but she says she didn’t participate in any filming for the second iteration, she said. According to Baskin, she told Goode and Chaiklin to “lose my number because [Tiger King 1] was not at all what we had agreed we were working on.”
To be fair to Goode and Chaiklin, the duo was under no obligation to agree to anything with Baskin — documentarians and journalists and even folks who make shows like Fuck Boy Island don’t typically collaborate with subjects when they create a work. But to Baskin, the end product wasn’t a doc; it was “just a reality show dumpster fire,” she said. A reality show dumpster fire that was arguably one of Netflix’s biggest hits ever, which is one of the many reasons its second season took considerably less than five years to complete. — EB
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