What is likely to be the end of Peyton Manning’s football career is being accompanied by unsavory off-the-field headlines concerning alleged use of human growth hormone and, now, the details of a decades-old sexual assault that allegedly occurred when he was a student at the University of Tennessee.
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Manning reportedly denied the incident, while Naughright’s superior and athletic trainer Mike Rollo said it was an accident that occurred when Manning mooned teammate Malcolm Saxon.
On Sunday, matters grew worse for Manning when Shaun King of the New York Daily News revisited a 74-page court document from a 2001 lawsuit that depicts ugly details of an alleged sexual assault by Manning.
There’s no allegation in the 1996 affidavit of contact with Naughright’s face or any other part of her body.
The trainer, Jamie Ann Naughright, settled in 1997, but sued Manning for defamation in 2002 after he discussed the incident in a book.
The lawsuit was filed by six unidentified women and focuses on five cases that were reported between 2013 and 2015, but it also references incidents involving Tennessee student-athletes dating to 1995. “Now, Manning is being not only accused of doing an terrible act to a woman and possibly attempting a coverup or smear campaign against her, but a recent report in the Washington Post stated that ‘goons” hired by Manning’s team of investigators visited the house of Charlie Sly (the man who was recorded saying Manning took HGH) and were dressed as police officers. The dining room ban was subsequently reduced to two weeks as well. You guys know that I’m on top of my stuff when it comes to sports and I never knew about all this. While that doesn’t excuse Manning if he “exposed himself” to Naughright, it creates the kind of inconsistency that Manning’s lawyers would have highlighted aggressively in response to the document released Saturday by the Daily News. (Whited was Dr. Naughright’s married name at the time.) The Mannings’ involvement in the distribution of the excerpts has not been proven, but again, even if Archie and Peyton had nothing to do with it, it was a effect of their own actions. It matters because the twisted culture that led to Manning being protected and Dr. Naughright being destroyed has endured. United States of America wrote about the same document back in 2003.
For one, the quarterback mentions that having a woman in a men’s locker room “is one of the most misbegotten concessions to equal rights ever made”. The statutes of limitation have expired and reaching a settlement is not an admission of guilt.
Read the full Sports Illustrated report here.
Manning, who turns 40 next month, just completed his 18th National Football League season with a 24-10 win over the Carolina Panthers in the Super Bowl. “But this is a document that was an advocacy document, allegations, if you will, that were made by the person’s lawyer years ago about an incident that took place 20 years ago and has now surfaced obviously at the behest of that lawyer or his client when Peyton is in the news and arguably receiving lots and lots of positive press”.
In court papers, the incident is used to show the University of Tennessee was legally “on notice” of ongoing issues of sexual harassment at the school but did little to stop it.
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And remind ourselves to also tap the brakes on thinking that sports stars necessarily live up to their best PR image.
