Sex and The Sporting Life

By Anastasia Toufexis

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.

With reporting by Kathleen Brady/New York and Lee Griggs/San Francisco