Kobe Bryant death: Memories of a sporting legend, father-figure, mentor and alleged rapist have to co-exist
If you do a quick Google search on NBA star Kobe Bryant, who along with his daughter and seven others died in a helicopter crash on January 26, among the many thousands of articles about fans and athletes and movie stars and friends and family paying their respects, you will also find glowing eulogies about his commitment to women’s basketball.
And it is not without merit. From coaching his daughter’s school basketball team to extending his support to women who played college-level basketball, to close involvement with the WNBA, Bryant was a mentor to many young women.
It is a part of his legacy as much as his 20-year NBA career with the Los Angeles Lakers and his two Olympic gold medals. But that’s not all that is part of his legacy. When we remember Kobe Bryant the player, the coach, the mentor, we also have to remember the Kobe Bryant who was accused of rape.
Content warning: The following part contains details of graphic sexual violence
Speaking of the night of June 30, 2003, Bryant’s alleged 19-year-old victim, who worked at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, a resort in Edwards, Colorado, told the police that she stayed back at work because “I was excited to meet Kobe Bryant,” and that she “was trying to make up the extra hours” that she missed by not getting to work on time.
After Bryant and his entourage’s arrival, she escorted them to their room. After that, according to her, “Mr. Bryant asked me, kinda in private, if I would come back in 15 minutes and give him a tour of the hotel. And I said that I would.”
She returned to his room around 10:30 p.m. After a tour of the resort’s facilities, they allegedly returned to his room. “We were talking and [Bryant] asked me to open the jacuzzi for him,” she told police.
Even after telling him that her shift was over, he coaxed her to stay and soon, began kissing her. While the kissing was consensual, what happened after wasn’t. In her testimony to the police, she further added, “He started, um, groping me, I guess I’d say. Putting his hands on me, grabbing my butt, my chest. Trying to lift up my skirt. Proceeded to take off his own pants. Trying to grab my hand and make me touch him.”
Bryant allegedly groped her for a few minutes and put his body between her and the door. He supposedly held her by the neck and physically forced her over to the side of the couch, where he bent her over, lifted her skirt, and took off her underwear, according to the victim.
Bryant allegedly then asked: “You’re not gonna tell anybody right,” to which the accuser said no. Following that, Bryant raped her, the victim claims.
Afterward, she told officers that Bryant issued her a warning. “[This] is just between the two, the two of us nobody is gonna know about this, you’re not going to tell anybody. Not asking me just telling me.”
The criminal case that followed was an exercise in humiliating the accuser. Bryant’s legal team dragged her name to the point where she stopped cooperating with the investigation and later the case was dropped. A civil suit that followed was settled by Bryant in 2005.
In a public apology to the woman, as demanded by her, Bryant said: “First, I want to apologize directly to the young woman involved in this incident. I want to apologize to her for my behavior that night and for the consequences, she has suffered in the past year,” adding, “Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”
Hagiographies by rule whitewash and deify. And when it comes to athletes, it is more so than ever. They are, after all, modern-day gladiators. They are demigods that people worship. And like all forms of worship, they can get toxic.
In the aftermath of Bryant’s death, Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez tweeted a link to a 2016 Daily Beast article about the alleged sexual assault, with the text: “Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality even if that public figure is beloved and that totality unsettling.”
She wasn’t the only one. Women’s rights advocate Julie Lalonde tweeted: “Kobe Bryant was a rapist. In case y’all forget that over the next few days.”
What followed both was an onslaught of misogynistic attacks on both. For the Ottawa-based Lalonde, there were emails and tweets telling her that she should have died in the helicopter crash. Some Twitter accounts also posted the addresses of other women named Julie Lalonde in Ottawa, in an attempt to doxx her.
For Sonmez, the attacks came not just on Twitter, but also at her workplace. She was temporarily suspended with pay by the Washington Post, before being reinstated on Tuesday, January 28. Washington Post's managing editor Tracy Grant said in a statement that “after conducting an internal review, we have determined that, while we consider Felicia’s tweets ill-timed, she was not in clear and direct violation of our social media policy.”
It is crucial to understand that this is a problem that is both related to a culture of toxic fandom and also a culture that forbids women from, let alone opening up, but even commenting on sexual violence. One can sympathize with fans: they are grieving the loss of their idol. But that sympathy cannot spill over to fans not being able to deal with the fact that their idol was a flawed person.
The concept of "Too soon" does not apply to a situation like this, simply because for the accuser, the stigma would always remain. To her, the posthumous adulation of Bryant would appear as a grotesque display of the power he commanded in his lifetime; power that he allegedly misused against her. And her stigma is one shared by hundreds of thousands of women across the globe.
So, where there are fond memories of Bryant as a friend, as a father-figure, as a mentor, as an idol, there is also in places, the memory of Bryant as a man who may have made someone feel threatened for the rest of their lives. Both memories can and have to coexist.