WASHINGTON, July 30 (UPI) -- God help the brave woman who comes forward with a charge of rape. But as difficult as that is even in a low-profile case, the pressure is even greater when the person accused is a popular athlete, amateur or professional.
The 20-year-old woman who accused Kobe Bryant of sexual assault must be living in the inner circle of hell.
Let's get one thing out of the way right at the start. Bryant is entitled to a presumption of innocence unless and until he is proved guilty, and not all rape accusations are genuine.
The same courtesy should hold true for the alleged victim in this case -- we should give her the benefit of our neutrality -- but it doesn't. For her, the world is truly turned upside down.
The facts in the case are rather poignant.
Bryant, a star with the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers, is accused of sexually assaulting a hotel employee in a hotel near Vail, Colo., in 2003.
Both sides seem to agree on the following facts. Bryant and the woman were alone in his hotel room. They were flirting together and he apparently kissed her. She says that's as far as she wanted to go, but he forced himself upon her. He says the sex was consensual.
The 25-year-old Bryant, who is married, has had to suffer the shame and opprobrium of such a public charge. He also knows that if convicted he could serve 20 years to life in prison. That's obviously not an easy burden to bear.
But so far it has been the woman, the alleged victim, who has been at the center of the storm. The death threats have been coming in thick and fast for her. Apparently, the worst thing you can do is come between sports fans and their enjoyment of the game, even if you are alleging one of the worst kinds of crime.
Makes you proud to be a sports fan, doesn't it?
Meanwhile, Colorado has been trying to keep the alleged victim's identity secret, as required by state law, but the state and the court haven't been doing a very good job.
Because of Bryant's fame, "'intense' is a word hardly sufficient to describe the pervasive coverage of the sexual assault case ... by the news media and others," the state said in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. "The intensive examination by the news media of virtually every facet of his case has been immediate, worldwide and a matter of widespread interest."
Quoting the alleged victim's attorney, the state said she and her family have been "receiving two or three phone calls a minute for ... six weeks." The phone calls contained "very, very disturbing messages. Some of them have been the subject of criminal prosecutions." At least three individuals have been charged with threatening the alleged victim. In the most extreme case, a California man was convicted of plotting to kill the alleged victim in exchange for $3 million solicited from Bryant's representatives.
A Swiss national was arrested in California after Bryant's representatives participated in a sting for police.
"These threats to the victim's safety underscore the need for the (judge's) extraordinary precautions taken to protecting the alleged victim's identity and other sensitive information about her," the state said.
Pardon me. But so far, state Judge W. Terry Ruckriegle's "precautions" have been less than "extraordinary."
How was the alleged victim identified? Sealed documents in the case, including the alleged victim's name, have been mistakenly made public by court employees at least three times. Lord, you know they didn't mean to, but they might as well have drawn a target on her back.
A court clerk even sent, via e-mail, sealed transcripts to at least seven media outlets, transcripts that contained details of the young woman's sexual history. Ruckriegle tried to close the barn door after the horse escaped, ordering that the mistakenly released material not be published or broadcast, but the media outlets have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight that order.
And Supreme Court precedent indicates the media, not the judge or the alleged victim, will win that fight on First Amendment grounds.
The latest court slip-up occurred this week when a sealed document mistakenly appeared on the court's Web site. The document contained details of DNA testing, important in a dispute between the prosecution and the defense on the young woman's sexual habits. The newly released material also contained the woman's last name.
In fact, the court's handling of the sealed material has been so sloppy for so long that the young woman's attorney -- even alleged victims need an attorney in a case like this -- has said that his client has lost all confidence in the judge.
You'll notice I haven't used the alleged victim's name in this column. If you're really curious, you could find the court's Web site on line. Just wait a while. Given past behavior, her name will show up again eventually by accident, no matter what the judge orders.
What a bunch of screw-ups.
The latest publicly aired fact used to batter the young woman's reputation is the disclosure that she has received $20,000 from the state's victims' compensation fund -- as if that is some economic motive for her accusation. The fact that most of that money has been consumed by the costs of therapy after the accusation doesn't seem to matter.
Media pundits following the case are confidently predicting that the alleged victim eventually will sue Bryant for big money, no matter what the outcome of the criminal case.
As humiliating as all this is, there may be one final, utterly degrading trap waiting for the alleged victim.
Forgive me. I thought long and hard before bringing this up; it involves some basic stereotypes about blacks and whites and about men and women. I don't subscribe to them, but I don't discount them either.
People are people. Even if they are sitting as a jury in a criminal case.
And though they'd never admit it, the members of a modern jury are fully capable of concluding that a young woman who is alone with a famous and virile young man, who flirts with him and kisses him, "deserves" whatever she gets, regardless of what actually happened in that hotel room last year.
I suspect, though I don't know, that many rape cases may be resolved this way. That because of the way a woman dresses or acts, or because of a spectacular lapse in judgment, the victim becomes the perpetrator in the minds of some juries. Saying "no" to forced sex doesn't seem to matter.
Perhaps you suspect this too. I don't care how often it happens; the thought of it still makes my skin crawl.
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(Mike Kirkland is UPI's senior legal affairs correspondent. He has covered the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal community for more than a decade.)
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(Please send comments to [email protected].)
