Why “Innocent until Proven Guilty” doesn’t apply to Deshaun Watson
Here is the problem with “innocent until proven guilty” when it comes to sexual assault allegations. You can’t prove consent did or didn’t happen.
Consent is a verbal agreement. Oftentimes it’s not even that. It’s just energy between two people who are completely alone.
Kobe Bryant initially told investigators that he never had sex with the 19-year-old hotel employee who accused him of rape.
That ended up being a lie. A rape kit proved this. Her blood on his shirt proved this. When this was revealed to Bryant, he changed his story. He said he did have sex with this woman, but it was all consensual.
And that’s a silver bullet for abusers. To convict a suspect, a jury needs to feel that the plaintiff has proved “without a shadow of a doubt” that what they say occurred, actually occurred.
How can you prove something that isn’t recorded, that isn’t witnessed, that isn’t marked? How can you prove an energy? The answer is, you can’t.
So nothing happened to Kobe Bryant, who had already been caught lying already. Who was already cheating on his wife to do this. Kobe, who had her blood on his shirt.
To this day, Kobe is known as an innocent man. The 19-year-old known to many as the girl who lied to try to destroy Kobe’s career. It is not that simple.
Ben Roethlisberger has twice been accused of rape. The first woman said that Roethlisberger called her to his hotel room to help him fix his TV and then proceeded to have sex with her while she begged him to stop.
The courts never charged him with anything, but he did reach a settlement with the woman. Is that a sign of his guilt? It could very well be, but because it didn’t “officially” happen, his career and life went on without a hitch.
The second woman accused him of assaulting her in a nightclub bathroom. But there wasn’t enough evidence to move anything forward, so nothing happened.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t care about “innocent until proven guilty” in these types of cases. In a murder case? Sure. With a theft charge? Sure. But I don’t think it is physically possible for courts to put Kobe Bryant in prison based on a he-said-she-said argument over consent.
The woman can be in the right and still not have enough proof. Her case falls through because of this, and she’s painted as someone who lied. Not only is it possible, but I also suspect it happens frequently. I think deep down, we all know it happens frequently.
Deshaun Watson is currently being accused of sexual misconduct by 20+ women. Initially, he claimed he never did anything with any of them.
But after the reports kept coming out, he changed his story. He did have sexual contact with masseuses, but it was consensual.
And then what can you do? What can the women do besides say, “no, it wasn’t?” What evidence can you expect them to provide if the space wasn’t rigged with microphones and cameras?
I felt gross titling this what I did. When I said I believed Watson’s accusers on my TikTok account, I got a few responses calling me racist. At first, I was shocked to see it. All I was trying to do is hold powerful men accountable and help young sports fans to understand problems with how the American legal system deals with sexual assault accusations. Watson’s race was not on my mind.
But there is an angle that I didn’t think about. The image of white people prosecuting a black man for a sex crime with no trial is understandably distressing. In the era of segregation, whites would use unproven sex crimes as an excuse to lynch black men. Some said this sentiment towards Watson is a modern comparison.
And I can understand that. And I’m going to try to be sensitive about that and address that I can see why that rubs some the wrong way. But I don’t care if it’s Watson, Big Ben, Kobe, or anyone. I’m going to keep my energy the same. I know there are countless examples of black people being unfairly treated by the criminal justice system. But I don’t think Watson is an example of this.
It’s probably more likely that he gets convicted of something than Big Ben was. Today, Roethlisberger has a pretty good reputation among sports fans, and his past isn’t really brought up. If Watson continues to play football, that won’t happen to him. And I do believe skin color has something to do with that. Big Ben had the advantage of being a white man when facing a similar situation, making a conviction even less likely. Watson doesn’t have that advantage, and that is incredibly fucked up in its own way, but I think that’s more of a “Big Ben had it too easy” thing than a “People are too harsh to Watson” thing.
Because people are not too harsh to Watson, I mentioned that I addressed this on my TikTok account, and I got a massive amount of comments coming to the defense of Watson. Each and every one of them was in bad faith. “innocent until proven guilty” was the most frequent one, and the one I feel is worth actually talking about. But I’ll go over the other main ones and why they’re all invalid.
“The women just want money.”
First of all, that’s a horrible investment. So few sexual assault accusations actually end in any punishment. A report done by UK Center for Research on Violence Against Women suggests that only 14–18% of sexual assault cases result in prosecution. High profile civil case lawyers, they aren’t cheap to hire! Tony Buzbee charges $1,200 an hour. Civil cases can bankrupt you if they go on long enough. These aren’t CEOs suing Watson either, these are masseuses. They are putting their money on the line here for an unlikely outcome. They also opened themselves up for harassment by having their identity revealed in a suit against one of the most famous athletes in the world. People act like they have nothing at stake. Launching a months-long civil lawsuit against someone who you know did nothing to you doesn’t make sense.
I’ve also seen people act like pursuing money in a civil case instead of a conviction in a criminal case is inherently bad. First of all, winning a civil case is easier to do. Second of all, wanting to be compensated for a wrongdoing done to you makes sense to me. That is a very common way that issues get resolved in this country. It is not exclusive to someone who feels they are a victim of a celebrity committing sexual assault. No other group of victims would face such scrutiny for filing a civil lawsuit.
“Jaxson Lister clutched a 1 v 23.”
I had never heard of Jaxson Lister before all this. Apparently, he’s a hero to the incels who assume every woman is out to lie for a bag. The story they tell is that he was a high school athlete accused of rape by 23 women, and all 23 of them were revealed to have been lying. This did not happen. He was accused by two, and the police never pursued it. Many women came out to support the two who were accusing him, but there weren’t 23 separate accusations. The two women weren’t caught lying. They couldn’t get anything to happen for all the reasons I’ve previously mentioned.
“What about Shawn Oakman”
It’s kind of the same deal as Kobe. He maintained that the sex was consensual and was found not guilty. Maybe he was telling the truth, but the story is the woman was caught lying to destroy his career. That’s not the case. Also, I see people act like he was in the running to go first overall in that draft. That dude was projected to be a late-round pick. That doesn’t matter all that much, but it shows how many false narratives start to villainize women in these situations. Also, no one ever mentions how he was kicked off of Penn State for assaulting a woman who confronted him about stealing.
“The Texans are staging this”
Literally, why would they do this? Watson demands a trade, so they orchestrate the most complicated conspiracy in the history of sports, involving dozens of lawyers and women to tank his value? Please think about that critically for just 5 seconds.
The timing was weird, I’ll admit. He wants to get out of Houston, and suddenly, all this starts happening. But maybe he really wanted to get out of Houston because he knew this was about to go down, instead of this all going down because he wanted to get out of Houston.
“What he did wasn’t even that bad”
While it’s true that Watson’s allegations aren’t as bad as they could be (no one is saying he drugged or raped them) you still can’t get naked in front of someone without their consent. That is definitely still a sex crime.
To conclude, it just frustrates me when people act like no one can suggest that Watson may be guilty before the process has totally played out. The process fails all the time. Bill Cosby is out of prison right now, and for why? I don’t trust the process.
Suppose nothing happens to Watson because consent is impossible to prove. In that case, sexists will take the world’s most problematic victory lap that will ruin dialogue around accusations like this towards athletes for a long, long time. Sports Illustrated wrote a pretty damning story about this situation. A friend of mine went to high school in Houston, and Watson DM’d his underage female classmates. I’ve seen those interactions myself. I don’t know if there will be enough evidence to prove Watson is guilty in the eyes of the courts. But I am not the courts, and I think it’s pretty clear he’s a creep. I know it could be convenient to be like, “courts say not guilty, so the women were wrong, and Watson was framed,” but it’s not black and white like that. So I’m just begging people to approach that with a level head and sensitivity, whatever the outcome is.