In a complaint that reads like the rape allegations made several years ago against NBA star Kobe Bryant, Harrah’s employee Andrea McNulty alleges sexual assault against Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in a lawsuit filed last week in Washoe County, Nevada.
But lawyer David Cornwell strongly denied the allegations Monday night, in a statement released to PFT. “Ben has never sexually assaulted anyone; especially Andrea McNulty,” Cornwell said.
In the civil suit, which Cornwell confirms was served on Roethlisberger over the weekend and a copy of which our own Gregg Rosenthal has obtained, McNulty alleges that Roethlisberger asked her to come to his hotel room to fix the television, and that he thereafter forced her to have sex with him.
Roethlisberger faces one civil count of assault, one civil count of sexual assault and battery, one civil count of false imprisonment, one civil count of false pretenses, one civil count of fraud, and one civil count of intentonal infliction of emtional distress.
Look, this is going to be a bad situation no matter what plays out from here. Roethlisberger could very easilly be the real victim here. Or everything this McNulty lady says could be true.
Either way, the guy’s reputation is going to take a major hit for being brought up in a rape lawsuit.
A few things are curious about what has surfaced so far. First off, the alleged “incident” occurred in July 2008, so a full year ago…also after Roethlisberger’s second Super Bowl win and now increased fame. Another thing – no criminal complaint was filed which would lead one to believe that there is no real evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. I’ve got no real knowledge of law outside of a few college classes, but usually the plantiff files any charge that has even a remote chance of sticking because it can always be dropped later.
We’ve got no insider knowledge and this is pretty much a he-said, she-said at this point. Anybody saying he is innocent or guilty is stupid. There’s no way to tell, so the people of Cleveland and Baltimore can stop celebrating in the streets.
We’d much rather be talking about football than worrying about this crap. Hopefully everything works out and it all goes away soon.
Yuck.
UPDATE: Here’s a few more thoughts…
Anybody can file a civil complaint for anything in a court of law (from what I understand…correct me if I’m wrong). In the case of a criminal act, there is as a burden of providing some evidence or proof before you can bring forth chargers. So, theoritically, this could be no more than a crazy woman out to make some easy cash. I don’t mean to downplay the situation, but I believe false reports of rapes are much, much more common than ones that turn out to be true.
As a Penn State fan, I watched Austin Scott get the final nail in his coffin when he was accused of rape during his senior season. Fans, myself included, called for his head and Joe Paterno listened and dismissed Scott from the team. In the end, the courts cleared Scott of all charges and the woman who filed the complaint was found to have a history of false reporting. Things looked bad at the beginning and Austin ended up having his entire football career ruined by a lie.
