TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080690/0806360.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.2 KB | 128 lines

                                                                                BEHAVIOR, Page 76

Sex and the Sporting Life


Do athletic teams unwittingly promote assaults and rapes?


    Once their exploits were confined to the back of newspapers,
but these days American athletes are hitting the front pages
with startling frequency -- and not for heroic feats. From high
school to college to the pro leagues, players are fast gaining
a reputation for off-the-field sexual rampages. At St. John's
University in New York City, members of the lacrosse team were
alleged to have drugged, kidnapped and gang-raped a female
student at their off-campus home. Two players on Oklahoma
University's football team were convicted of rape. In Glen
Ridge, N.J., five high school jocks were charged with sexually
assaulting a mentally impaired teenage girl with a broomstick
and miniature baseball bat.

    The revolting tales hardly reflect what one expects of
athletes -- or of sports in general. Traditionally, athletics
has been viewed as a healthy outlet for natural male
aggressions. But the spate of assaults has many people
convinced that today's athletic environment encourages sexual
violence. Reliable statistics are hard to come by concerning
the number of players who commit antisocial acts, sexual or
otherwise, and many experts argue that male athletes are no more
prone to violence than the general male population. Still, a
three-year survey completed for the National Institute of
Mental Health discovered that athletes participated in about
a third of 862 sexual attacks on campus. Another national study
of 24 gang sexual assaults at colleges found that most involved
fraternity brothers or members of athletic teams, primarily the
football and basketball squads. "If you have an athletic
fraternity, watch out," warns psychologist Bernice Sandler of
the Association of American Colleges.

    To a great degree, sexual abuses are a consequence of men
banding together in tight-knit competitive groups. Like
military platoons, ghetto gangs and college fraternities,
athletic teams foster a spirit of exclusivity, camaraderie and
solidarity. Jocks not only play together but also often eat and
live together. And personal integrity is frequently a weak
match for group loyalty. In a mob, especially one fueled by
alcohol or drugs, individuals may not blanch at joining in a
gang rape. "They will do anything to please each other,"
observes psychologist Sandler. "They are raping for each other.
The woman is incidental." And, she adds, "they don't think of
it as rape even when the victim is unconscious. Rape is
something done by one man in a dark alley."

    Heavy peer pressure is just one factor. Contact sports may
be inherently violent, but, notes Harvard's Dr. Lawrence
Hartmann, president-elect of the American Psychiatric
Association, "sports today is a phenomenon of excess, of
ferocious aggression." Players are encouraged to bash opponents
out of a game, by fair means or foul. Brawls and scuffles
interrupt baseball and basketball games, and hockey melees have
long been so common they are considered just a part of the
show. Few athletic officials seem upset. Instead of quickly
handing out fines and suspensions, too many coaches and
managers engage in long-winded debates about whether offending
players should be punished at all. Winning is what's important,
so what does the mayhem matter, even if it is against the
rules?

    From there it is a short step for athletes to believe they
can ignore the rules in everyday life as well. Society
conspires in that belief. Sports stars move in a rarefied world
of privilege where good grades, money, drugs and sex are
readily available and transgressions are easily forgiven.
"After all, the group-think rationale goes, rules are for
others, not for heroes," points out psychologist Toni Farrenkopf
of Portland, Ore. Communities are outraged when minority
youths are involved in sexual assaults, but when revered
athletes are implicated, the response is commonly a tut-tutted
"Boys will be boys" and a sotto voce variation of "She asked
for it."

    Victims find their complaints are not treated seriously.
Gang rape is too frequently dismissed as (somehow more
acceptable) group sex, for instance. Women are frequently
pressured to drop charges. Says Gail Abarbanel, director of the
rape treatment center at the Santa Monica Hospital Medical
Center in California: "A victim seeking redress often finds
herself silenced for the sake of the university's athletic
success." A classic example occurred in 1983, when University
of Maryland basketball coach Lefty Driesell telephoned a coed
in an attempt to have her drop an accusation of sexual
misconduct against one of his players. Driesell's action drew
only a reprimand from the school.

    Some colleges and a few pro teams are beginning to address
the issue. Brochures, seminars and films are being used to
heighten athletes' sensitivity to rape and other violence. The
Santa Monica center has produced a compelling 20-minute
videotape titled Campus Rape, featuring L.A. Law stars Susan
Dey and Corbin Bernsen. But even more stringent measures are
needed. Among the suggestions: providing tough and swift
discipline for violence on or off the field, shifting the
emphasis in sports from winning to improving skills, and
abolishing special residences for athletes.

    Ultimately, men will have to be willing to draw the line for
themselves and others. "A lot of us are unwitting accomplices,"
admits sociologist Edward Gondolf of the University of
Pittsburgh. "It takes prompting and confrontation from women
to make us understand." He knows. As a college football player,
he watched a gang rape and laughed. Gondolf awakened to women's
suffering and men's responsibility when his wife told him she
had been raped before they met. That is a harsh way to learn
a lesson. Better if players would remember that to the ancient
Greeks, athletes were the embodiment of both physical and
moral grace. American athletes have the first; now many of them
must struggle for the second.


By Anastasia Toufexis. Reported by Kathleen Brady/New York and
Lee Griggs/San Francisco.