O’Brien, a graduate of Notre Dame, covered the Texas Rangers for the Star-Telegram and then the New York Yankees for Newsday

O’Brien, a graduate of Notre Dame, covered the Texas Rangers for the Star-Telegram and then the New York Yankees for Newsday

O’Brien, a graduate of Notre Dame, covered the Texas Rangers for the Star-Telegram and then the New York Yankees for Newsday

A former sports reporter has revealed that she was raped by an unnamed Major League Baseball player in 2002.

Kat O’Brien described in The New York Times how she was attacked in a hotel room while interviewing the player as a 22-year-old junior reporter.

She had been out of college for a year and was working in Texas for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. O’Brien spent the ’02 season covering a story about how foreign players adjusted to life in the United States. 

O’Brien wrote: ‘I sat down in a hotel room with my interview subject. We spoke for a few minutes as I asked some questions and he answered. Then he moved suddenly to kiss me.

‘I said, no, no, I don’t want that, but he pushed me over to the bed. I tried to shove him. I said no, stop, no, stop, over and over. He pushed further, getting on top of me, pulling off my skirt, and having sex with me against my will.

‘While it was happening, I couldn’t process that it was happening to me. I said no, again and again. Too terrified to move, I froze. Afterward, I remember getting in my car, shaking, to drive home, and looking at my blue-and-white skirt from Express, and thinking why did I have to be wearing a skirt? Because it was Texas in summer.

‘I remember, once I got back to my apartment, drinking a bottle of red wine in a desperate attempt to numb my sadness and rage. Instead, I threw up all over the carpet.’

O’Brien, a graduate of Notre Dame, covered the Texas Rangers for the Star-Telegram and then the New York Yankees for Newsday. 

The former MLB writer, who did not name the team the player was on, said she never reported the attack because she was convinced it would wreck her career.

She also blamed herself for the assault, thinking that she had been ‘too nice, too trusting, too friendly and open.’ 

O’Brien also revealed that she was terrified that the story might one day get out and was fearful that she was the subject of locker room gossip. 

Not long after the rape, she says she bumped into an All-Star player at the Arlington, Texas, ballpark in the visiting team’s clubhouse. O’Brien said he ‘stared at me, saying my name and the name of his teammate, the man who had raped me.’

O'Brien said she was raped by an unnamed MLB player while working as a reporter in Texas in 2002 (stock image)

O'Brien said she was raped by an unnamed MLB player while working as a reporter in Texas in 2002 (stock image)

O’Brien said she was raped by an unnamed MLB player while working as a reporter in Texas in 2002 (stock image)

It then dawned on her that the alleged rapist must have told people, ‘making himself out to be a stud’ to his teammates and making her seem like she was ‘some girl who was there to pick up ball players instead of doing my job.’ 

After the rape, she said she avoided taking jobs in cities where the rapist was playing baseball and tried not to take higher-profile writing gigs for fear that it might lead to her story getting out. 

‘The rape followed me at work, and in the rest of my life I pushed away anything that brought traumatic memories back,’ O’Brien wrote.

‘I didn’t really date until more than four years later, I didn’t trust that intimacy. I kept people at a distance. It was easy to explain away this choice to others, and myself.’ 

The writer said she would never name her attacker because that would give him the power to slander her name.

O’Brien wrote: ‘I choose not to name him because it would only open me up to the possibility of having dirt thrown on my reputation; even all these years later and in the wake of the #MeToo movement, a former professional athlete wields considerable power. I hope I can help bring about systemic change rather than seek unlikely-to-come justice for one horrible act.’

She said she had decided to come forward after reading reports in January that New York Mets General Manager Jared Porter had been fired for sexting a female reporter. 

These brought back memories of her own experience and also made her realise that she was not to blame for what had happened.   

Source: Daily Mail

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