Originally Posted by :
Now that the full 11-minute recording of Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill and his now former fiancee, Crystal Espinal, talking about violence in their relationship has been aired, many fans are saying wow, this changes everything.
It does? That Hill, who didn’t know Espinal was taping him, denies ever hitting her or their son in what he thought was a private conversation is neither surprising nor exculpatory.
Abusers typically tell not only the police but friends, family, therapists, priests and even themselves they’ve never done anything wrong.
And if anything, the fact that Hill now says he didn’t hit punch or choke Espinal in 2014 makes him look worse rather than better. He pleaded guilty to those charges, publicly apologized, went through extensive therapy and declared himself reformed after probation. If he’s now back to saying that none of this ever happened, that’s not just a lie but a worrying one.
“I didn’t touch you in 2014,” he says on the tape. “And put that on everything I love, bro. That’s the real truth.”
That Espinal isn’t screaming at him that no, it’s not the truth, real or otherwise, is taken by some supporters as proof that he is innocent.
But why a woman who has been injured by him before and he’s threatening to hurt again might not do that should be obvious.
When she instead repeatedly asks him where her bruises came from if he never hit her, he doesn’t answer because there isn’t an answer that he likes well enough to repeat.
On Thursday, Espinal filed a petition in Johnson County seeking a paternity test for their newborn twins. She has full custody of them — they live with her — and she is asking for child support and only supervised visits for Hill. Her lawyer in the matter is legal counsel for SAFEHOME, a Johnson County group that supports survivors of domestic violence.
The NFL, meanwhile, seems ready to let Hill off with a brief suspension because the legal case against him isn’t going anywhere, but these things are still true:
Hill’s son was removed from his home after a child abuse investigation was launched. The Johnson County district attorney said the 3-year-old child had been hurt, but he didn’t have enough proof to prosecute.
On the tape, we heard Hill threaten the mother of his children with physical violence: “You need to be scared of me, too, dumb bitch.” He berates and belittles, calls her “bro” and “bitch” and of course, claims she ruined his life.
Denial of all wrongdoing is so standard in abuse cases that just a look at Thursday’s Star provides other examples, including that of Scott Hacker, the now former Parkville police officer charged with domestic violence after allegedly shooting his gun inside his home, throwing the woman who called 911 onto the couch, grabbing her by the throat and blaming her for “ending his career” by calling for help. Both before and after the cops arrived, he said he hadn’t shot the gun or touched her. But oops: A security camera in the living room apparently recorded the assault.
What Espinal was trying to get was the audio equivalent of that video.
If the NFL lets Hill back on the field this season, it will send the message that making threats and showing you’ve learned nothing from probation is no real problem, as long as you can run fast enough. The help he needs is not more denial, but just the opposite.
To the rest of you who are intent on seeing Hill as the victim, KCTV as a villain for not immediately releasing the full tape, and Espinal as a “manipulator” for wanting evidence to back her up in court, we could suggest some reading on the well-researched subject of abuse. But why, when you seem to prefer not to know?
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501:
That's my biggest issue and why this is a Rosen issue. It's fine to have a negative opinion on tyreek. But there has been enough seeds planted for real journalists to investigate tyreeks side of both stories.
Not even a hint of that. Nobody talking to tyreeks roommate (Carrington Harrison did). His anger management counselors. No one looking into the credibility of the accusers family. The papers job is to present both sides and let the reader draw their own conclusion. If the editorial board still wanted to say they think tyreek is guilty after a fair presentation of both sides, fine. But the way this is handled is a complete hit job from the top down.
What got me is the total dismissal of Tyreek's claim of innocence in 2014. Actually, it's worse than that: the writer somehow claims it makes him more of a monster. I understand it's an op/ed -- one written to signal to the coastal elites that not everyone in KC is a domestic abuse apologist -- but it was hardly a reasoned, sober analysis. In fact, it was cringe-worthy. The woman who wrote that is just an unhappy, awful person. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower:
No. The career arc of a sports journalist is why I felt no guilt in giving up on the path six years ago.
If you're not at a premier journo program like Mizzou or Syracuse, you're going to slog your way through writing for your school paper and freelancing or unpaid interning with a local paper. Post graduation you'll be lucky to get a staff role anywhere and you'll probably get stuck in a very small town covering middle school sports as your starting point to maybe monkey bar swing gradually into increasingly bigger markets.
It took the guy I personally know (and who was gracious enough to throw me work and advice) 15 years to make it to the point where he's covering professional sports wherein he spent the better part of a decade in two small to mid-size metro areas in the capacity of an editor/reporter focusing solely on high school prep sports.
This made me wonder about Brooke's career path, so I looked her up on linkedin. Does anyone want to guess what her first job was?
Freelance liveblogger
Company Name Inside Lacrosse
Dates Employed Mar 2012 – May 2012
Employment Duration 3 mos
I covered both men’s and women’s lacrosse games for Inside Lacrosse. I liveblogged a running play-by-play and wrote game recaps afterwards for games featuring UNC-CH and Duke.
Yes, her first journalism job was covering Duke lacrosse.
Now, unlike the KC Star, I'm actually going to investigate this further with a neutral mindset. The false allegations and the big blowup were in the 2006 to 2008 time frame, before she was there. And she was only there for three months. The aftermath according to wikipedia continued all the way into 2014, though. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mecca:
Those who do speak might come to regret it, like Chiefs coach Andy Reid did when he mistakenly said in April that Johnson County district attorney Steve Howe had reopened an investigation involving Hill and Espinal and the treatment of their 3-year-old son.
A star reporter stated this first. I'm guessing Andy fucked up and thought he could trust the KC media. [Reply]
Originally Posted by FringeNC:
Is too much to ask that the Chiefs beat reporter care more about the NFL than social justice issues?
You have to consider that almost everyone working in influential positions in the media has far-left political views, and people with those views will see their position as carrying a responsibility to advance 'justice'. They don't feel this is an issue where they are biased or being political, they feel it's a right vs wrong thing and it's their duty to take and advance positions. [Reply]
In all of these quasi-apologies we get the same tired crap "Well we can't know what happened..." "Well we were misled" "Well there are still too many questions to come to a conclusion..."
THEN FUCKING GO DO SOME INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING!!! How the hell is it not your job to go do these things? Why are none of you actually out there pounding the concrete on leads trying to figure out what actually happened instead of just vomiting up someone else's work?
Even now, right this very second, after all this crap has happened - Vahe is still going to the "what do we actually know?" well instead of actually trying to find out what more may actually be knowable.
Holy crap these guys are pathetic. I mean just embarrassing as hell. If this stuff doesn't fall right into their laps, they simply will not do it.
And then they'll throw their hands up and say "How could we have known? What did you expect us to do...work for it?"