Why Soccer Players Kick Ass

I ran across this story a couple of weeks ago, I think on Feministing, about three players on the de Anza College women's soccer team rescuing a 17-year-old girl who was being gang-raped by baseball players at an off-campus party. I had read that the boys claimed it was consensual (despite the girl being intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness) and that the DA didn't think she had enough evidence to get a conviction, so she declined to prosecute. It all sucked, but that was all I heard until the girlfriend sent me more from sfgate.com:

The three broke in, grabbed the girl and carried her out. They took her to the hospital, notified authorities and volunteered to testify in any court proceedings. What more could you ask?

To keep their mouths shut. To butt out. To mind their own business.

That's the message the soccer players got from the men accused in the case.

"People I didn't even know were coming up to me and saying, 'Stop your lying. Shut your f -- mouth,' " Chief Elk said in an interview last week. "We'd be walking around, and people would actually come up and get in our face."

Maybe the DA is skittish after the Duke lacrosse fiasco, or maybe--since she is a woman with a record of aggressively prosecuting sexual assaults--it's just phenomenally bad luck that in the course of focusing on getting the comatose girl out of the room, the soccer players failed to get a clear look at the face of the guy they pulled off her. But the usual denials and claims by the boys in the room and their attorney (she wanted it, she consented, no crime here) twist in the wind of the facts.

"She had vomit dribbling down her face," Chief Elk has said. "We had to scoop vomit out of her mouth and lift her up."

(Cahners says tests proved that the vomit was not the victim's. But Grolle says "that's even worse,'' meaning that someone else's vomit was in the girl's mouth.)

"She was literally lifeless," Grolle says. "Her eyes were completely shut. On the ride to the hospital, I had to keep my hand under her nose to make sure she was breathing."

This, remember, is the girl who is supposed to have "consented" to sex.

An underage girl is so drunk she's comatose. And somebody pukes in her mouth. And a bunch of guys stand around and watch another one fuck her while she's in this condition. And the subjects of derision and threats are the women who put a stop to it?