Baseball Star, Friends Charged With Rape—And The Slut-Shaming Begins

A group of friends from Miami, one a star NCAA baseball player, has been charged with the rape of two seventeen-year-old girls. Given that it involves athletes and girls getting drunk, brace yourselves for an extra-ugly fallout.

Garrett Wittels, a Florida International University student who is “on the verge of breaking the record for the longest NCAA hitting streak,” and four other friends, all 21, were arrested last week after events that took place at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas on December 20. An anonymous source told The Miami Herald that security footage shows the girls sitting at a bar, “drinking and kissing one another, before gesturing to the suspects to join them.”

The source — about whom we know nothing — also said, “They drank too much. They went to the guys’ room. The girls were together. The girls are saying they can’t remember anything,” the source said. Also, according to the paper’s paraphrase, “One of the girls threw up on herself, and was given a T-shirt to wear by one of the young men.” When the girls came back to their hotel room, one of their fathers called the police.

The age of consent in the Bahamas is 16, so that’s not an issue. Let’s say for the moment that events did unfold as described. We get that it can be difficult to draw lines around alcohol and consent, especially if the guys themselves were drunk, but here’s a hint: If a seventeen year old girl vomits all over herself and you have to give her a new t-shirt before engaging in sexual activity, she is, perhaps, too drunk to consent to sex. Call us crazy! We’re like the Saudi Arabia of blogs. Or something.

Do yourself a favor and don’t read the comments on the Miami Herald story, unless you want to see indignant folks talking about how this is so unfair of the Herald to run the story so soon after “our bowl victory,” or trashing the girls for their behavior. But hey, you don’t need to scroll down that far — here’s Wittels’ father, ill-advisedly discussing the case with a reporter.

According to Michael Wittels, Garrett and his friends met the girls at the casino, and the girls followed them willingly to a private party. Surveillance video exists, Michael Wittels added, showing the girls — and not the accused — were the aggressors, at least in public.

“The next morning, they found out who [Wittels] was, and that was the road they took,” Michael Wittels said. “He hasn’t been found guilty of anything. I hope [the media] doesn’t hang him for merely an allegation. That’s all this is.”

Here we go again. The girls were the aggressors. They were making out with each other — this is what happens when you tell girls it’s okay to kiss each other! We’ll make it even shorter for Wittels: They were asking for it. They’re gold-diggers. They want to ruin the lives of our good, upstanding boys. By now, it’s like a script.

FIU Baseball Star Garrett Wittels Charged In Rape Of Two Girls In Bahamas [Miami Herald]
College Slugger In ‘Rape’ [NYP]