Women sports writers across the country Friday defended their Boston Herald colleague who was sexually harassed by players on the New England Patriots.
Lisa Olson of the Boston Herald charges that on Sept. 17 she was sitting on a bench interviewing a player when five naked teammates approached and made lewd comments. She says receiver Zeke Mowatt asked, ''Do you want to take a bite out of this?'' while other players 'egged him on.'
'I've been in 500 locker rooms,' said Christine Brennan, a veteran Washington Post sports writer, 'I have rolled my eyes. I have laughed. I've had towels thrown at me. I've had whoops and hollers.
'I've been taking it for 10 years, Lisa's been taking it. We've had hundreds of women taking it, taking and taking it and we continue to do so because we love these jobs.'
Patriots owner Victor Kiam initially justified his players' conduct, saying women didn't belong in the locker room, a violation of league policy.
Kiam referred to the issue as a 'flyspeck in the ocean'and called Olson a 'classic bitch.' He denies the slur and later apologized, although Olson rejected the apology.
'It's unconscionable that someone could think something like that and make a horrible situation worse,' sports writer Barbara Barker of the Bergen Record in New Jersey said. 'I hope his razors aren't as abrasive as his personality is and no one buys them.'
Kiam, president of Remington Products, has faced threats of a consumer boycott of his shaving company and a fan boycott of Sunday's home game against the New York Jets.
Barker and Lisa Harris of United Press International cover the Jets. Barker said she previously has heard degrading comments in college and baseball locker rooms. Neither she nor Harris has encountered problems in that regard on the Jets.
For two seasons, Harris helped cover the New York Giants while Mowatt played for the team. She had no locker-room trouble with Mowatt, but was repeatedly told by his teammate Joe Morris, 'You don't belong here.'
'But Lawrence Taylor regularly gave me extra time for questions and made room for me when television cameras were crowding in,' Harris said. 'The spectrum has been pretty wide-ranging with far more good, and the bad has been pretty minor.'
Jenny Kellner, a horse racing writer for the New York Post, used to cover the Jets. She had a similar experience to Olson's, involving former Jet Mark Gastineau.
'What d'ya think?' he asked her of his naked physique.
Said Kellner: 'It looks like a penis, only smaller.'
Kellner never had problems with Gastineau again.
'I never was accosted by more than one or two at any one point,' Kellner said. 'But it's been going on since they opened up the locker room to women. Finally, there's some outrage.'
Karen Guregian, Olson's colleague on the Boston Herald, wrote in Friday's column that she doubted an incident like this would have happened on the Boston hockey beat, nor, she added, would Bruins management have handled the matter as the Patriots did.
'Had (Olson) been a Bruins reporter, she wouldn't be going through half the hell she is now,' Guregian wrote.
Carrie Muskat of UPI in Chicago is not so optimistic.
'The situation hasn't changed -- no matter how professional or how many women are in this business, there's still a lot of old-fashioned beliefs and obnoxious little boys in major sports,' she said. 'The whole thing doesn't surprise me.'
Leslie Visser, a former Boston Globe reporter working for CBS Sports, was the first woman to cover the Patriots.
'My thought on this, is it's not whether she belongs in the locker room,' Visser said. 'We've already gained that ground. That right is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The issue is the incident and how management handled it.
'I'm looking forward to when all the facts are in, but if Mr. Kiam said those remarks, he has degraded every woman. But it's really important to remember this is five people and not 47 or 48 Patriots or the whole NFL.'
