Kat O'Brien Says She Was Raped By Major League Baseball Player
Former sports reporter Kat O'Brien has opened up about being raped by a Major League Baseball player when she was 22 years old.
O'Brien -- who graduated from the University of
Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business -- kept the incident a secret until
now, when she told her story in a New York Times essay.
The now-40-year-old writer says she had just graduated from
Notre Dame and was working as a (mostly high school) sports reporter for
"The Fort Worth Star-Telegram" in 2002.
She was in a hotel room with an interview subject for a
longer piece on foreign-born athletes in the U.S., when things took a
frightening turn.
"We spoke for a few minutes as I asked some questions
and he answered," writes O'Brien, who did not identify the athlete.
"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."
O'Brien felt as if she told anyone, her career would be
ruined.
And so, she kept this secret for years, back and forth
between blaming herself and telling herself it never happened.
It wasn't until last January, O'Brien says, when NY Mets
General manager Jared Porter was fired for sending sexually explicit texts and
pictures to a female reporter in 2016, that she started to think of her own
experience.
“I hadn’t been a sports reporter in 11 years, but as I read
accounts of other women’s experiences with sexual harassment, the full force of
my own assault hit me,” she said.
“And with it came the relief that I actually hadn’t invited
it, hadn’t done anything wrong at all, something I had never once considered.”
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