Illegal hits off the field

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 11, 1995 | by Karen Goldberg

A new study indicates that athletes are disproportionately involved in assaults against women. But the data may reflect broader social trends.

More and more, the sports pages are becoming a notorious Who's Who of athletes accused of assaulting women.

* Portland Trail Blazers guard Rod Strickland was arrested and accused of giving his former girlfriend a black eye.

* University of Nebraska running back Lawrence Phillips was charged with assaulting his ex-girlfriend a day after scoring four touchdowns for the Cornhuskers.

* Minnesota Vikings quarterback Warren Moon, a former NFL Man of the Year, apologized publicly after posting bond on a charge of assaulting his wife.

The list goes on: football's Dan Wilkinson, basketball's Robert Parish, baseball's Dante Bichette. Just as domestic violence knows no class boundaries, it also knows no professional discretion.

Are assaults by athletes really on the rise or are more women finding the courage to face their a athletes take aggression with them from the playing fields and into their homes?

"The trend reflects an increase in what is going on in society," says Jackson Katz, a founder of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston. "We have been tracking incidents of domestic violence, not just in sports but in the culture, and have found that it has been on the rise for some time." The vast majority of men who batter women are not athletes, notes Katz. But the murder trial of former football star O.J. Simpson, whose past history of spousal abuse was wellreported, brought new awareness to an old problem.

At least one recent study reinforced the connection between athletes and domestic violence. Researchers at Northeastern and the University of Massachusetts reviewed 107 cases of sexual assault at 30 Division I schools between 1991 and 1993. They found that male student-athletes, compared with the rest of the male student population, "are responsible for a significantly higher percentage of assaults reported on the campuses of Division I institutions." Although male athletes at 10 of those schools made up only 3.3 percent of the population, they were involved in 19 percent of the reported assaults.

Overall, domestic violence is tough to gauge because incidents most often go unreported -- especially when the alleged abuser is a well-known athlete. Parish's ex-wife, Nancy Saad, has said she kept quiet about beatings during their marriage because of her husband's celebrity "My family was absorbed by the status of Robert," she told Sports Illustrated. "Everyone was. The image he portrayed was a quiet gentleman. Who was going to believe me?" Even if there is a police report, charges often are dropped; frequently, a woman will call the police in the heat of the moment, then back down when it comes to pressing charges.

The sporting subculture always has celebrated physical strength and domination, but this mentality has taken a dangerous turn in the last generation, Katz says. "Look at foot ball. It is the last bastion of male aggression.... But look at how much more violent our violent sports like football have become. Look at the number of fights, not to mention physical ability. Look at how the ideal male athlete body has evolved to be bigger, stronger and more violent than ever before. Young guys are identifying with this."

Ed Tapscott, New York Knicks vice president of administration and scouting, says that some athletes have difficulty making the transition from field to home. "An interesting comparison is to Vietnam vets who one day were in this survival mode, then the next day were given their walking papers," he says. "What are athletic games if not war? We need to look at how difficult it is to come off the field with your adrenaline flowing and attitude altered. I know when I was coaching, I used to punch lockers or kick the wall after a tough loss, and my least-proudest moment was when I insulted my mother after a game."

Violence also might be a backlash against the women's movement, which has made great strides in promoting female independence during the past 25 years. "Men need sports in order to bolster a dying form of masculinity," writes Mariah Burton Nelson in her 1994 book, The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football. "Men are very emotional about sports. They are cheering for a type of violence."

That athletes are treated differently in the criminal-justice system doesn't help, notes Tapscott. "When Joe Sixpack abuses his wife, he must go through the criminal-justice system," he says. "But when Joe Athlete does, he is treated royally. Not only that, when he goes out and scores three touchdowns or 32 points, the acclaim of his accomplishments restores very quickly any self-esteem he lost by beating the woman."

Having identified the problem, Katz is seeking solutions. He heads a project called Mentors in Violence Prevention that organizes workshops for college athletes. Individual schools are addressing the issue in the same support programs that deal with campus gambling and drug abuse.