THE prosecutors used this girl, too. Now that this year of madness has finally been laid to rest, it must be said.
The lawmen who preside over the Colorado backwater of Eagle are guilty of having their way with a young lady who cried “Rape!”
They might have helped her. Instead, like any two-bit athlete with the morals of an alley cat, for more than a year the men who enforce Eagle’s cowboy justice used this girl to fulfill their own, selfish needs.
The Insane Clown Posse running Eagle wanted desperately to adorn their belts with the scalp of basketball star Kobe Bryant.
So they pressed on with a case that was not just unwinnable – but, as many of us in the cheap seats long ago came to believe – this seemed not to be a case of rape at all.
After a year in which they egged on the “victim” – a sad and confused young lady who, I believe, may have come to truly believe she was raped – they gave her the broom.
For weeks, lead prosecutor Mark Hurlbert telegraphed his urgent wish to bow out of this craziness with a shred of his reputation intact. The Eagle avenger wanted to avoid becoming the Lance Ito of Colorado.
He was faced with a case he could not win, based on physical evidence that pointed not to rape, but to consent. And here was a “victim” whose story of being pinned down and forced into sex against her will was simply not believable.
So what did he do? Hurlbert used the lowest excuse in the book to explain drop- ping the charges against Bryant:
He blamed the victim.
“The motion to dismiss is based on the sole fact that the victim is unable to continue,” the prosecutor said.
He could have spared everyone – Bryant, the taxpayers, and especially the woman at the center of the whirlwind – by coming to that conclusion a year ago.
A year ago, the “victim” admitted to a detective that she came on sexually to Bryant. She confessed that she never said “no” to his advances. Only later did she changed her story.
A year ago she walked into a medical examination, a day after the alleged rape, with the semen of a man, not Bryant, on her yellow knit panties. And for a year Hurlbert led her on.
So what of Bryant?
The wife and mom in me wants to say he deserves what he got. But let’s get real. He is spoiled, but not a violent criminal. A cad, but not a monster. And far from alone.
“When does a young man give in to the temptation? After 100 women throw themselves at him? A thousand?” a male colleague asked me.
The biggest victim here may be the next woman who is raped.
Who will believe her now?
For that, the Eagle Clowns should be sorry.