Yesterday, we covered the thorough look at Hope Solo’s domestic violence case conducted by Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN’s Outside the Lines. While one of the most salient aspects of the piece was U.S. Soccer’s seemingly willful blinders towards the full context of the situation, there were other details that warrant mentioning.
For one, the goalie was far from congenial with her arresting officers:
The police were trying to book her into jail, but Solo was so combative that she had to be forced to the ground, prompting her to yell at one officer, “You’re such a b—-. You’re scared of me because you know that if the handcuffs were off, I’d kick your ass.”
Solo, perhaps the best women’s soccer goalie in the world, had repeatedly hurled insults at the officers processing her arrest, suggesting that two jailers were having sex and calling another officer a “14-year-old boy.” When asked to remove a necklace, an apparently drunk Solo told the officer that the piece of jewelry was worth more than he made in a year.
What was interesting, from a media perspective, was how different the Outside the Lines piece was than an access-based profile of Solo by Allison Glock for ESPNW and ESPN the Magazine, which was published in the same week. While it would be unfair to label Glock’s story as a puff piece or say that it rationalized or justified Solo’s behavior, it did not go nearly as deep into the domestic violence incident police report.
Both of these projects were in the works for weeks, or even longer, and it doesn’t make for great optics for the ESPNW piece that their aspects of Solo’s story were contradicted by visual evidence from the authorities in the Outside the Lines investigation. For example, in noting that there were conflicting stories about what happened the evening of the incident, Glock wrote:
Police accounts collected that night also reflect warring stories, with Solo insisting she never behaved aggressively and the Oberts asserting that it was an intoxicated Solo who jumped her nephew, calling him a “p—y,” later claiming that she slammed his head into the floor, Teresa entering the fray to shield her son.
“Hope told him he was too fat and overweight and crazy to ever be an athlete,” recounts one officer’s report. Her nephew shot back that Solo, “and particularly her father, were the crazy ones,” after which Solo “‘charged’ and took a swing at him.” He then “grabbed [Solo] by the hair, took her to the ground and held her there until she calmed down.” Once she seemed calm, “he let her go and she immediately grabbed his hair, pulled his head down and started punching him in the face repeatedly.”
In a contradiction to Solo’s claim that she never acted aggressively, Outside the Lines published photos collected from the police report of cuts and bruises on the faces and bodies of Obert and her son. For example, this was a cut on her son’s ear:
In the ESPNW piece, Solo referred to herself as a “victim,” — when she had previously done this in an interview with Good Morning America, her half-sister Teresa Obert was incensed, and afterwards began to speak publicly about the incident — and, while Glock did not offer agreement with that assessment, she wrote:
Still, the truth of what happened that night might never be fully exposed. At a pretrial deposition, the Oberts adjusted their story. The supposed gun went missing. They burned the broomstick. “That had nothing to do with the case,” explains Mary Gaston, the Oberts’ attorney, of what the family called a “séance.” “They also got rid of everything else that reminded them of Hope. They literally burned her soccer shirts in the barbecue in an effort to move on and to heal.”
On Jan. 13, 2015, a judge cited the prosecution’s witnesses’ failure to cooperate before dismissing all charges; the Oberts had shown up to one deposition but missed several appointments for a second. The Kirkland prosecutor announced a rare appeal and must file a legal brief to restart the case by July. Solo considers the dismissal a vindication, even if for her, it came too late. “My name was completely smeared. I had already been compared to Ray Rice, to Adrian Peterson,” she says of the media swirl around the charges. “From here on out, no matter what happens, I’ll forever be associated with domestic violence.”
As she revisits the night and its protracted aftermath, Solo begins to cry. She feels stupid, she says, palming tears from her cheeks. For what happened, yes, but more for trusting people she now views as poisonous. “It was hell,” she says. And then, “I should have known.”
Glock’s piece covers the good and bad with Solo. It explores her upbringing — she was conceived during a conjugal visit; her father was a lifelong con man and her mother an alcoholic (however, relationships with both parents were ultimately salvaged) — as well as her ostracism from her 2007 World Cup teammates for publicly questioning coaches for benching her (she remains polarizing with teammates), her apparently great treatment of fans and kids, and her marriage with Jerramy Stevens.
Again, though, it’s bizarre that something published days later under the same umbrella highlighted details that were either omitted or not discovered, and that a piece so prominent and comprehensive as Glock’s ran without some of those major facts. (ESPNW’s piece also did not address Solo’s belligerent treatment of her arresting officers.)
The coverage of Hope Solo during the Women’s World Cup is going to walk a fine line. In his weekly media column, SI’s Richard Deitsch summarized a Fox Sports 1 panel about the goalkeeper, and found the analysis of some former players, who could barely conceal their resentment about the responsibility to eschew sticking to sports, to be unsatisfactory:
Near the end of the show, [Eric] Wynalda seemed fed up with the conversation. “I’m just kind of hoping we can get to the point where we can talk about the World Cup,” Wynalda said. “I’m at the World Cup right now. I don’t want to talk about domestic violence. I understand it’s a story. I don’t want to talk about FIFA. I want to start talking about how this team is going to play in the World Cup.”
Wynalda has every right to feel that way as an analyst and as a viewer I have every right not to watch the group he was part of heading forward. I like what Fox has done with its game coverage but my first experience with its studio group was severely disappointing. If I see this particular group on air again before or after games, I’m likely heading elsewhere for analysis.
While it’s certainly inconvenient for the U.S. Women’s National Team that new details on Solo’s year-old arrest emerged on the eve of their World Cup debut, it likely won’t be a story that they’ll be able to ignore.
from The Big Lead http://ift.tt/1MBTvKH
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