Tuesday, July 21, 2009

More Big Ben Takes

I woke up and saw the news this morning about the lawsuit.

It may get uglier before it gets better.

I saw a blog take on Yahoo that asked a pertinent question, but also raised one for me.

Here's the blog article.

My question is this: according to the lawsuit, Ben is "one of nine defendants listed".

Ok, but how does that jive with the situation described as "The suit alleges that Roethlisberger asked the woman into his room on the pretense that he needed help with the television, and then forced her to have sex with him."?

So there's "nine" involved with that scenario or just one? I don't know. I guess we shall have to see and stay tuned. I'm sure that the Smoking Gun will have the entire complaint up sometime today or tomorrow.

The Yahoo blog author asks a very good question though:

"First, why only file the lawsuit now when the alleged incident happened a year ago? And second, why were there never any criminal charges? Why only a civil suit?"

I'm no expert in sexual assault cases, although I've seen my share of Lifetime movies, but I would assume that in these situations, a criminal complaint should be/would be filed very quickly (as to not lose evidence etc), and a civil complaint is only after a criminal complaint.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but (and I'm thinking of the OJ trial) isn't a civil complaint almost akin to just getting a money settlement in return and no jailtime for the guilty?

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