2.165. Victim Blaming

This is going to be rough.

I’m afraid we’ve hit that point where someone may have shamelessly adopted the #metoo tag for their own personal gain. Full Disclaimer: I don’t personally know the people involved. I do not know any more about the situation than what the lawsuit alleges. I do know that the entire thing is peculiar to me. What I find odd is that the initial lawsuit was for wrongful firing and once the company decided not to settle, the plaintiff added all the sex stuff and went very public.

Lets start at the beginning.

The NFL network recently suspended multiple on-air personalities as part of the fallout from the amendment to a wrongful termination lawsuit. The amendment alleges that these six men all either sexually harassed or assaulted the plaintiff and that the NFL network knew about it. She doesn’t claim that she was fired as part of a cover up. She does however dispute the claim that she was fired for theft. Now, in this amendment she goes into details about how much these men all tried to force sex with her. Where it starts to go awry for me is right there. There has been no other mention of this particular culture at the NFL network, so it is completely reliant on her being the target–or at least the target willing to speak. That in of itself is not grounds to dismiss her claims. However, when you add to it the similarities between what all these men supposedly did and the fact that this was added to an existing suit once the NFL network refused to settle, there is cause to pump the brakes.

Just like X-files, I want to believe. However, the information here feels suspect. I’m more worried that one false claim will cut the momentum away from what is an important and useful conversation about the way we treat each other as humans.

 

Some Thoughts:

  1. I want to write a story that starts like this: Used to be that Tommy wanted to be the guy that was always around, but people rarely talked about. Now he felt more like the guy everybody talked about but was never around.