What we should all agree on, is that at the very least this whole affair represents extremely poor judgment on his part. I am sure a lot of athletes hop in the sack with women they meet, but someone like DD should have a better sense of self preservation. One nighters with women he meets in bars puts him in the cross hairs for this type of trouble. He needs to be smarter than that and I dare say, more mature.

So let’s put aside the moral transgression part of the discussion until the authorities act, but don’t forget to chastise Drew for being so stupid.

Since you place so much emphasis on how unfair this potentially is to Doughty, I felt like it was a good time to underline why the policy exists in the first place. It not only exists for a good reason — it is also rarely abused. I’m glad you clarified.

Let’s not also forget that most police officers are men and that there is an anti-victim bias among cops in rape cases. Cops do not take crimes men commit against woman (rape, domestic violence) nearly as serious as they do other crimes, whether because of societal pressures or because police departments are fraternal organizations and they can see themselves being put in the same situation as the alleged attacker, I can’t say, but it is a known fact.

Imagine the case of a 25-year-old party girl who the cops might even know as a girl who sleeps around because it’s a small community and word gets around. One night she had a little too much to drink and went home with a sexy rich hockey player. When it turned out that it wasn’t just him there but also some of his friends, she decides against having sex with him and demands to be taken home. He agrees, but thinks she really just didn’t wanna look like a slut in front of his teammates so he continues to make advances. Even the cabbie driving has seen this girl on a few occasions with different guys so he thinks nothing of it as they “mess around” in the backseat. Hell, maybe she was teasing him the whole time to keep him worked up because that was fun for her. He walks her to the door and pushes his way inside with her. She still doesn’t wanna sleep with him anymore, but he has managed to get himself worked up and forces her. Yes, she is a girl with a reputation who has been around the block and might even have been trying to get him worked up but if he had sex with her without her consent, under the law, he raped her. Just because a girl is a slut doesn’t mean she can’t be raped.

And by the way, I don’t know what the girl’s reputation is in this case. I don’t know what happened on the night in question. Everything I just said was for illustrative purposes only. I am not calling the victim a slut or a liar and I’m not calling Drew Doughty a rapist. As I said before, I hope this didn’t happen, but if it did, I would be very troubled by it.

I seriously doubt that, if the accusation does not result in charges being filed (charges can’t be dropped if there are not charges to begin with), the news of Doughty’s exoneration (to the degree that it will be seen as such) will receive anything but a fraction of the attention the initial story received. Except, of course, that the TV news people will take the opportunity to gleefully repeat the original accusation in all its gossipy detail.

I also don’t share your optimism that a disproved allegation won’t “stick” to a person accused and subsequently cleared of rape. My experience is that people seem to subscribe to “where there’s smoke…” 

I didn’t follow the Kobe story from a few years ago, but my dim recollection is that he was accused of rape by a woman who turned out to be a crackpot. You can argue that this hasn’t “really” affected Kobe’s reputation, but I would counter-argue that that’s only because he’s a rich, famous sports hero. If it were just my neighbor three doors down, his whole life would be summarized as “that guy who was accused of rape by a crackpot but who knows what really happened.”

Having said all that, I would also like to add that there’s a chance Drew Doughty is a rapist and a criminal and if that’s the case he belongs in jail and his career would deserve the devastation that would be visited upon it. 

So far I don’t see any reason to believe the likelihood of Doughty actually being a rapist is very big.