Matthew Araiza won the Ray Guy Award in 2021. In 2022, he won the Bad Guy Award.
After Araiza set the NCAA record for yards per punt at 51.19, the Buffalo Bills expended a 2022 sixth-round draft choice and bestowed a $3.8 million contract on the so-called “Punt God.”
Then came news that a 17-year-old had accused him of participating in a gang rape of her. He lost his roster spot, his contract, and his reputation. Last week, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office announced its decision to not file charges against him long after police recommended no charges. This week, his accuser dropped her civil suit.
“I’m well aware now of the evil that is out there in people who are willing to ruin someone’s life for money,” Araiza divulged in a new conference earlier this week.
Video evidence did not show Araiza participating in the videoed sex and proved that he had left the party by the time the accuser claimed the rape happened. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports notes, “Prosecutors also told the girl that video recordings of the incident in the bedroom caused them to question whether there was actually a rape, rather than consensual sex with numerous men.”
Araiza lost millions of dollars and the opportunity to play a single down in a regular season NFL game because corporations assume guilt in the post–#MeToo era. For all the good #MeToo did — calling into account and putting on notice predators who impose themselves sexually on women makes for a societal improvement—disregarding norms such as the right to confront an accuser and the concept of innocent until proven guilty harmed Western civilization profoundly. (RELATED: The War on Men Continues on Campus)
This abandonment of procedural safeguards certainly harmed Matthew Araiza profoundly — and Trevor Bauer too.
In 2020, Bauer became the first pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds to win a Cy Young Award. He strangely remains outside of Major League Baseball.
“Next victim,” a woman who falsely accused him of rape texted before ever meeting him. “Star pitcher for the dodgers.” She texts repeatedly of his money — “Net worth is 51 mil” — and being a “whore” to get it. She videos herself, smiling glibly next to Bauer in bed as he sleeps, the morning after her sexual assault supposedly took place.
2 years later and I can finally talk about this ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/o6jFqMzY05
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) October 2, 2023
“I was never arrested,” Bauer noted in a must-watch video. “I was never charged with a crime, and I won the only legal proceeding that took place without my side of the story even being heard.” (READ MORE: What Happened to Trevor Bauer Matters. This Can’t Go On.)
Following the Duke Lacrosse case, one might expect healthy skepticism or at least agnosticism to greet accusations against star athletes. This would seem especially expected of responses to accusations against athletes who can afford to pay lucrative settlements. Instead, journalists and sports leagues deny accused athletes due process. They assume guilt. They try the cases in the court of public opinion instead of the court of law. They mete out de facto fines of millions of dollars and the punishment of reputation destruction.
The subset of young women who sell their bodies on OnlyFans or look upon dating as a way to pry money and gifts from men need not stray far from this ethical code to shout “rape” as a means of gender-based expropriation. Ironically, this behavior amounts to if not a mirror image then a feminine image of masculine predatory behavior the like of which they falsely claim victimized them. Women also prey on men, but it generally takes on forms other than force. The evidentiary-shunning, gender-partisanship of the believe-all-woman mantra, always tribal and anti-intellectual, now appears especially untenable. Unfortunately, Araiza, Bauer, and other real-life cases do little to jar loose such mental straitjackets because the examples inhabit the factual plane and the mindset occupies the ideological plane. Real-world invalidation rarely upends a priori conviction born from ism and not experience.
“This idea society has that the second somebody flies a lawsuit it’s completely true and we must take action based on what’s alleged, I disagree with it,” Araiza said at a press conference. “And I think professional sports teams as well as college teams should have the backbone to say, ‘Look, we take these allegations seriously but until something is proven, we can’t cut our guy, we can’t push somebody out who has worked their whole life to be here.’”
