Since the advent of the #MeToo movement, a number of industries have faced reckonings with sexual misconduct — sometimes through revelations about the actions of specific people, and sometimes on an institutional scale. The film industry and the political scene both come to mind as examples. A number of high-profile recent cases in the world of professional sports — including the Mets’ firings of Jared Porter and Ryan Ellis — suggest something similar happening there.
Now, reporter Kat O’Brien has written an account of being raped by a professional baseball player in 2002. She was 22 at the time, and working on a detailed story about foreign-born Major League Baseball players adjusting to life in the US. A few minutes into an interview for her story, the player she was interviewing assaulted her.
Her account of the rape, and of its subsequent effect on her everyday life, makes for harrowing reading. This included both direct reminders of the attack — including some inappropriate behavior from a teammate of the player who raped her — and other instances of everyday sexism at the teams she covered.
O’Brien cites the Mets’ firing of Porter earlier this year as what prompted her to come forward now. “I hadn’t been a sports reporter in 11 years, but as I read accounts of other women’s experiences with sexual harassment, the full force of my own assault hit me,” she wrote.
And, as she noted in the article, the significance of this attack isn’t just about the sport. “A professional athlete raping a reporter isn’t a sports story,” she wrote. “It’s a story about power in our society, and how men wield it against women.”
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