Serena Williams began some damage control with backlash growing over her comments regarding the Steubenville rape case.
The world’s No. 1 tennis player released a statement on Wednesday a day after Deadspin published quotes from an upcoming Rolling Stones article where she’s quoted as saying the 16-year-old victim was “lucky” and should not have put herself in that position.
“What happened in Steubenville was a real shock for me,” Williams wrote on her blog. “I was deeply saddened. For someone to be raped, and at only sixteen, is such a horrible tragedy! For both families involved – that of the rape victim and of the accused. I am currently reaching out to the girl’s family to let her know that I am deeply sorry for what was written in the Rolling Stone article.”
What was written in that article was Williams’ take on the situation after seeing a news story on the case that involved two players (Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmon) from the celebrated Steubenville, Ohio, high school football team being convicted in March of raping a drunken 16-year-old girl; one of the boys was ordered to serve an additional year for photographing the girl naked. The case gained widespread attention in part because of the callousness with which other students used social media to gossip about it.
“She’s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember?” Williams told the magazine. “It could have been much worse. She’s lucky. Obviously I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different.”
Williams, who won the French Open two weeks ago, doesn’t deny the controversial take, but she doesn’t confirm it, either.
“What was written – what I supposedly said – is insensitive and hurtful, and I by no means would say or insinuate that she was at all to blame,” the she wrote.
“I have fought all of my career for women’s equality, women’s equal rights, respect in their fields – anything I could do to support women I have done. My prayers and support always goes out to the rape victim. In this case, most especially, to an innocent sixteen year old child.”
With AP