Lyric from: Make a Movie from the album The Perfect Storm
Written By: Carl Terrell Mitchell, Chris Brown, Samuel Lindley and Aaron Levius Brunson
Performed by: Twista and Chris Brown
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| Photo of Andray Blatche Courtesy of Brad Penner/USA Today Sports |
Back in 2002 the internet was abuzz about a video of Grammy-winning R&B sensation Robert “R.” Kelly urinating on a teenage girl who may have been as young as 13 at the time, during an alleged sexual encounter.
I never watched the thing but, I figured out that the folks who did had, pretty much, classified it as a porno with celebrity styled appeal. Or at the very least, per Kelly’s denial, a porno with celebrity look-a-like styled appeal.
But it wasn’t a porno, it was a home movie of a grown man committing, by definition, statutory rape.
For his part, formal child pornography charges were brought against Kelly. His trial began in May of 2008 and the “I Believe I Can Fly” star was eventually acquitted. And unlike the late Michael Jackson, Kelly’s acquittal seemed to officially close the book on that chapter of his life. He has rarely been subjected to any media scrutiny regarding the matter in the years since.
But the popularity of the videotape left an indelible impression on me.
I had previously considered the appetite for that type of thing to be limited to the cravings of textbook sexual deviants except that a few people I know had watched it. Of course they may have just been curious.
But I wondered how normal, balanced people had been so numbingly entertained by something so morally and criminally detestable.
Yesterday a news story that started out as one about a Brooklyn Nets player being questioned in an alleged sexual assault at a Philly area Four Seasons ended with sources telling ABC that the police found evidence of a date rate drug in a suite and had confiscated Andray Blatche’s cell phone which contained compromising photos of the alleged victim.
He was with a group of three men-two of which are alleged to have carried out the assault-and three women at the hotel after having met the 21-year old accuser at a gentleman's club. The police have said that the woman told them that she had consensual sex with one man and non-consensual sex with another.
Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey has said that he's not sure if charges will be brought because he doesn't believe the woman will make a very good witness because "she was so intoxicated".
He added that Blatche was among the witnesses interviewed by police and so far is guilty of nothing more than poor judgement.
Blatche chimed in on the narrative with this self-professed development offered via his Twitter timeline and then later deleted:
“Im ok and I didn’t do anything jus was n the area when it happened”.
This investigation is far from over. The Philadelphia Police have now said that they don't intend to release any additional information about the case right now but, if what sources and the victim claim to be true holds up, Blatche will be right about one thing.
He didn't do anything to stop the act, content to merely stand by taking pictures.
The celebrity involved sexual assault case has long been a source of hotly contested debate in our culture. Most of us just can’t fathom the notion that a rich and famous person would have to violate anyone in order to meet their sexual needs.
We have all heard the stories of the persistent women that gather in hotel lobbies, stadium tunnels and celebrity hosted after parties clamoring for the chance to spend one night with the famous object of their desire.
Additionally, our fondness of the individual involved can sometimes cloud our judgment. And our awareness of the aggressive tendencies of supposed gold diggers almost always shapes our incapacity to trust the word of the victim.
About an hour before I started writing this column, in fact, I mentioned the still developing Blatche case to someone and their first reaction was to say that they didn’t believe it. Only when I mentioned the police statements and the evidence collected at the scene were they open to the idea that this whole thing might have actually happened.
That said, however, as the possible perpetrators of this crime I doubt that Blatche’s friends will get the celebrity adjacent benefit of the doubt. Our contempt for the regular people who do these awful things is pretty cut and dry.
But what of Blatche and his acknowledgement regarding his just being “n the area when it happened”?
His words are rife with detachment from the gravity of the situation.
Back in December of last year news broke of a celebratory night in Steubenville, Ohio that turned criminal as well.
The crime was chronicled by some party goers who began passing around photos and videos via Twitter posts that indicated that they too had just been in the area when two members of the famed Steubenville High football team-Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays- had been involved in the sexual assault of an unconscious, teenage girl.
The girl had come from the nearby town of Weirton, W.Va to celebrate the impending start to another, presumed, successful season for the Big Red football team and attended a series of parties where she consumed too much of the alcohol that shouldn’t have been present.
The accused boys have maintained their innocence with regards to their charges of rape and kidnapping.
This story on nytimes.com provides the chilling details of that evening as well as a delineation of how this case has divided the small town.
In short, Side A thinks the players are the victims and that this is simply a case of a young girl using these accusations to avoid taking responsibility for her poor decision making that evening. Side B thinks the Side A folks are again exalting the Big Red players to “protected status” and they’re sick of it. They want to see justice done here.
But it is the despicable words of a former Steubenville baseball player offered on Twitter, who was also featured in a YouTube video talking about the alleged rape that seemed to, months in advance, most succinctly summarize the answers to the questions and concerns I raise in this column.
“Some people deserve to be peed on,” he said.
His quote apparently inspired by the reports that the 16-year old victim in this case had been urinated on as well.
And it captures the nitty gritty of our partiality to so easily detach, to be unmoved by this type assault.
In the absence of a rooting interest in the well being of a loved one in a case like this, we have little compassion for a person who’s misfortune we can categorize as a consequence of a decision they made that we believe we’re too good to make, a behavior which we wouldn’t be caught dead exhibiting or a hard luck lot in life that requires them to take whatever cruelty the world decides to dole out.
So the Weirton teen in the Steubenville case deserved what she got because she couldn’t handle her liquor.
Groupies deserved to be used and abused because well, they’re groupies.
And Blatche and his friends likely thought very little of their alleged crime that night. After all, the victim was a stripper who agreed to accompany them back to their hotel in the early morning hours. She must have been down for whatever, right?
And like the teens in Steubenville, Blatche was apparently more than willing to capture the epic night in pictures for posterity’s sake.
He may ultimately receive a pass in both the court of law and the court of public opinion. His photos may amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist and by the time this matter is settled, sports fan will probably be many big stories removed from this one.
In the Steubenville rape case, the city’s Police Chief William McCafferty said of the people who were around but chose not to intervene, “If you could charge people for not being decent human beings, a lot of people could have been charged that night.”
If the facts proposed so far turn out to be true, his strong words may prove fitting for Andray Blatche as well.
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