There Is No Margin for Error

Men who rape should be locked in a cage with other men who rape. They are more than criminal. They are evil. They are rabid. Men who confess to rape, men who are caught in the act of rape and men who are convicted of rape without a shadow of a doubt are subhuman and not even animals, because animals lack the capacity to change. Some animals have to be fixed.

But if you identify one of these creatures by name, you had better have the right name. You had better be sure. This is the sword that is hanging over the heads of 20 current or former Cincinnati Bengals, on a weekend when they would have preferred their only concern to be a game against the visiting Raiders.

If any or all of these 20 individuals did, indeed, take active roles in, or witness, the alleged sexual assault of a Spokane, Wash., woman on Oct. 3, 1990, at a Seattle hotel, then not only should they pay for their crimes, but they should be made to suffer. Heaven knows this woman has, if truly she has spent two years reliving the terror of the events she has described.

Yet if even one man has been misidentified, one human being falsely accused, then he, too, will have to live with this, whenever another woman or neighbor or friend or relative or teammate or potential employer looks him in the eye, or rather avoids it.

Twenty names have been made public, five months after a civil lawsuit was filed on behalf of the unidentified victim. Authorities had the terrible dilemma of keeping every one of four dozen Bengal players under a cloud of suspicion or of specifying those who have been singled out by the woman as the culprits, in what must have been an unimaginably difficult identification process.

Even now, federal marshals are attempting to serve summonses on each of the players named in the complaint. Every strange face at the practice field or locker room door is being studied with trepidation and dread.

If they did it, if she can prove it, if she can nail them, then these guys deserve everything that happens to them. Rape is reprehensible enough without it involving a gang of men, athletes all, and a victim described as a 98-pound mother of four.

As ever, it is difficult to imagine anyone who would come forward with such a story who would not have to, whose desire for money or vengeance would be such that she would be prepared to drag herself and 20 others through make-believe slime. Considering the behavior of so many men in the “civilized” world, it is a wonder more women aren’t unwilling even to go out on a date.

This was no date. The evening in question was detailed as two hours of a woman being “brutally and sadistically” taken against her will.

Put yourself in her place and you want to cry. But also put yourself in the place of one, or two, or five, or even 20 Cincinnati Bengals if by any chance these events did not occur as stated. One player, a former standout at UCLA, said his being named as a defendant in such a suit “hurts like hell. It hurts your family. The damage is already done.”

If he’s guilty, good. It should hurt. It should torment him with a lingering pain. If he isn’t guilty, however, God forgive those who branded him forever.

The former heavyweight boxing champion of the world is doing time inside an Indiana prison for sexual assault. The lesson of Mike Tyson should be burned into the consciousness of every athlete, that he will not be spared merely because of his prominence or wealth.

With a minimal amount of physical evidence, Tyson, a first-time offender, nevertheless got six years. There were no witnesses and there was no confession of guilt. But all the same, a jury put him away.

It could happen to anybody. It could have happened to 20 Cincinnati Bengals. As it is, they are going to be defendants in a lawsuit, not in a rape trial. A couple of years ago, the Bengals thought pressure was playing in a Super Bowl. They never really realized what pressure was until now.

Let this be a warning. Even if these particular men did not do what was said, there are other men out there somewhere who do similar crimes. You will be found. You will be named. You will be thrown into a cage. If you want to act like some kind of animal, then you will be treated as one.