SPECIAL REPORT: CRIME & SPORTS ’95 : Victims of Abuse Want Solution, Not Publicity

The frustration facing women who want to report violence against them--and law enforcement authorities who attempt to investigate--when the alleged perpetrator is a famous athlete is increasingly defined by recordings and transcripts of frantic 911 calls, such as this one:

The woman is crying into the telephone.

“My husband just beat me up,” she says. “I want to file a report.”

“What is his name?” asks the dispatcher.

“Is this going to be in the paper tomorrow?” she responds.

She changes her mind about filing a report. Before the woman hangs up, she tells police not to come to the house.

The dispatcher calls back. The husband answers.

He announces his name to the dispatcher, then says, “My wife wants to get in the room and she’s not getting in here and I don’t give a . . . what anybody says.”

The dispatcher asks the man to go downstairs to meet officers when they get to the house.

“I ain’t going anywhere,” he says. “If he wants to come in, fine. If he wants to send me to jail, fine, I don’t give a . . . . But I’m not taking this crap. Forget it. If he wants to knock the door down, tell him to go ahead.”

When police followed up on the incident by going to the home a few days later, the woman cried and refused to give a statement. The police report states she said, “It will only get in the paper and nothing will get done. I’m tired of all this. . . . I just want it to go away.”

The man in the incident is Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants. The woman is his former wife, Sun. The incident, as described in the San Jose Mercury News, occurred in 1993, and, despite her allegations that Bonds had physically abused her since 1989, Sun Bonds never filed charges against her husband.

Sun Bonds testified in the couple’s divorce trial that her husband attacked her and kicked her when she was eight months’ pregnant. During that court proceeding, the presiding judge asked Bonds for his autograph.