Privileged Athletes?

I recently read part of this book called "Sports in contemporary Society" by Stanley Eitzen, in the section of the book that I was able to read, it talked about current issues going on with athletes and rape. In the book it talked about how athletes are hardly ever charged with rape if a girl accuses them. Male athletes use lines and excuses such as "she was asking for it" or "she wanted it," because of this the jury and judge usually drops the charges against the young athletes believing them over the women. Rape is a touchy subject to write about, statistics have show that 1 in 6 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted, and only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail. (Facts taken from http://www.endthebacklog.org/whatisthebacklog.htm) From another website I found that 54% of sexual assaults are never even reported to the police. -http://www.rainn.org/statistics

Reading this article made me start to think about all the crimes that privileged athletes have committed and they have got away with, either not charged at all or found not guilty in court. A prime example of elites getting away with crimes, is the trial case of O.J. Simpson, he was charged with the murder for his recently divorced wife, Nicole Brown, and Ronald Goldman; however, even though much of the evidence pointed to him and the fact that he had a history of abuse towards her, he was found not guilty. Is this because society doesn't want to believe that elites could be capable of such crimes or just ignorant to the facts? Either way it seems that athletes have started to get a reputation for pushing the limits of the law.

In another book that I recently read by Raquel Kennedy Bergen called "Issues in intimate violence" she talked about athletes and their aggression and how it compares to non athletes. She states in one of her chapters called, Arrest and Conviction Rates for athletes accused of Sexual Assault, that "settings most correlated with sexual aggression showed that while non athletes factors such as alcohol consumption were most highly correlated with sexual aggression, being an athlete also was a positive associated." From this quote it is easy to see that athletes have a tendency to be more aggressive than non athletes, but what happens when athletes drink? From this quote we can assume that when athletes drink they are twice as aggressive then non- athletes. In my personal experience I have also found that this statement is true.