September 4, 2004

For the past few days, I've been listening to predictions that the abrupt ending of the Kobe Bryant case - not to mention the endless smearing of his accuser - will do irreparable harm to future date-rape cases.

I can't say I buy that.

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Yes, the young woman had her privacy shredded - in large part by the system that should have shielded her. But, in my book, this case was never a typical acquaintance-rape case. The celebrity and wealth of the defendant catapulted it into another category altogether.

The fact is women who have been raped by someone they know, by so-called friends or passing acquaintances, have always known that the price of coming forward is high. They have always known their reputations would be smeared, their judgment criticized, their intentions questioned. The harshest critics of date-rape victims will continue to be the harshest critics: the women themselves. They carry around reservoirs of self-recrimination. It's why so many never come forward in the first place, and I'm one of them, remember? The Kobe case simply spelled out the risk in letters as big as the Hollywood sign.

That said, from the start my feelings about the Bryant case were . . . complicated. Difficult even now for me to sort. Everything was magnified. Especially the stakes.

The celebrity and nine-figure salary of the defendant, the circumstances and the unflattering media portraits of the woman had me viewing her with more skepticism than I did Lisa Simpson of the University of Colorado infamy. Lisa, I understood. I understood her drunkenness and how it possessed some reckless, come-hither part of her. I could see, in my mind, what had happened and how. A part of me, while reading the police transcripts and depositions, became Lisa Simpson. And as irresponsible as she was, I never doubted she was raped.

But, I didn't feel the same connection in this case. And, no, it wasn't the charge that the woman had sex with someone else after Bryant that did it for me. That, frankly, I can see. There are many women who equate sex with solace. No, it was more that I could not imagine ever going to the private room of a celebrity and being stone-cold sober to boot, and not think sex was in picture. I know, I sound like one of those 'what did she expect?' jerks I usually criticize. People argue she was naive, she was trusting, she was star-struck, flattered by the private audience. She expected one thing. He, filled with the entitlement of celebrity, expected quite another. This is plausible.

But, during the CU scandal I beseeched readers to weigh what a woman has to lose against what she has to gain when judging the veracity of a date-rape claim. Going public with such an accusation is like being stripped bare and scalded, I argued. Only a woman who has a great deal to gain or who is mentally unstable might lie.

And so, here I am, pinned by my own words. Look, I don't know anything about Jane Doe except what I've read in the papers. I've wavered between thinking she was either incredibly cynical or incredibly naive or just plain not well. In her defense, Bryant's reputation was not Mike Tyson's.

But did she have much to gain? Clearly. Did she have more to lose? That's harder to answer. There are too many variables, too many unknowns. We do know that once charges were filed, she was mercilessly persecuted, hounded from state to state. Three people were arrested for threatening to kill her. All of that would be traumatic. But, after some time, she would have slipped back into anonymity. And she would have been rich.

A female friend of mine suggested Bryant's accuser backed out of the criminal case at the last minute because she couldn't face her lie any longer. But I really don't make much of the timing. One way to look at it is that she balked as the case started becoming real. The jurors were being selected. The date approached for her to walk into that courtroom before 12 strangers and relive what happened.

Another way to look at it is that a settlement looms.

But, now, no matter what happened that night or what she says, this case belongs to the cynics. It no longer represents "the pesky issues of justice and righteousness," as News legal analyst Scott Robinson put it. "It becomes about money."

More than that, it risks being reduced to just another example of the consequences of a celebrity-obsessed, reality-TV culture. Everything is for sale. Dignity had a price tag slapped on it a long time ago.

Everywhere you turn people are saying, yep, Kobe Bryant is writing that check right now. Well, except for a friend who tells me, "I pray to God that if Kobe didn't do it, he doesn't pay her."

For that matter, whether he did or not, I'd like to see her drop the civil case. Even if it's a futile act of symbolism, I'd see it as a step toward quelling some of the doubts that she was in it for the money all along. In fact, if she hadn't been put through so much hell by the legal system, I might tell her to tear up any check she gets as well.

Now, wait a minute, you might argue, if he raped her, she should go after him for everything she can get. She deserves at least that. Heck, his wife got a $4 million ring out of it. Sorry, if he raped her, but she decided she couldn't go forward with the criminal case because the pressure was too much or the case too shaky, she needs to do what thousands of women have done: Consider it a hard lesson learned.

It's harsh and it's absolutely unfair, but the taint of money is strong and the stakes high.

To quail at the last minute and abandon a criminal case will not, I believe, hinder or give pause to future acquaintance-rape victims who might come forward. But, to abandon criminal prosecution and continue to move forward with a civil case and a possible financial settlement might. The unavoidable fact is that it reinforces the already strong suspicion surrounding acquaintance rape. It gives further fuel to the motormouths who claim women lie about date rape all the time. It goes, as a lawyer might say, to motive.

It doesn't matter that unless Bryant pays her off, a civil case will not make this woman wealthy. At the most and under a best-case scenario, a jury could award her slightly more than $1.4 million, Robinson tells me. Of that, her lawyers would likely take 30 to 40 percent.

Whatever her intentions and whatever might have happened, this whole sad case becomes about manipulating the gray area of date rape for money. And what rape victims need are more people believing them, not fewer.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2699.

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