In an allegation startlingly similar to the Kobe Bryant rape case, a hotel employee has accused Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger of raping her in a penthouse suite of a Lake Tahoe casino last year.
But while Bryant’s accuser went to police, Andrea McNulty never filed a charge with cops and only made her shocking allegation against the two-time Super Bowl champ in a civil suit filed last week in Reno, Nev.
Roethlisberger’s attorney, David Cornwell, said his client vehemently denied the allegation.
“Ben has never sexually assaulted anyone — especially Andrea McNulty,” Cornwell said. “We will defend him vigorously.”
He pointed to the lack of a police report as “the most compelling evidence of the absence of criminal conduct.”
McNulty says she did report the alleged assault to officials at the hotel, but say they pressured her to stay silent.
“Most girls would feel lucky to get to have sex with someone like Ben Roethlisberger,” she quoted the hotel’s chief of security, Guy Hyder, as saying.
A spokesman for Harrah’s said he could not comment on pending litigation.
McNulty, 31, said that following the alleged assault, she fell into a deep depression and was hospitalized several times for anxiety, running up $380,000 in doctor’s bills.
McNulty said the incident occurred when she had been working as a concierge during a celebrity golf tournament Roethlisberger attended with other athletes, including Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, last July.
At around 10 p.m. on July 11, 2008, Roethlisberger returned to his room with a woman who left about 20 minutes later, the suit said.
He then came to the concierge desk and asked for help with his television. McNulty agreed to go herself. After finding that the television seemed to be working fine, she tried to leave, but Roethlisberger blocked her way and started kissing her, the suit said.
“Ms. McNulty feared that since he was a football player, he could or would physically harm her if she attempted to fight him,” the suit said.
After telling Roethlisberger to stop, she claims, he pushed her onto the bed and pulled her underwear off.
“Please don’t,” she said she told him. “I’m not on any type of birth control.”
“Don’t worry. I will pull out,” she said he replied.
When he finished, she went into the bathroom to compose herself, but as she left, she claimed Roethlisberger began acting nervously.
“There are cameras in this room, aren’t there?” the suit quotes him as saying.
“Yes, there are cameras everywhere,” she replied.
“If anyone asks you, you fixed my television,” Roethlisberger is quoted as saying. “You fixed my television! Now go!”
Kobe Bryant was charged with raping a hotel employee at a Colorado resort in 2003. He admitted having consensual sex with the woman, and the charges were later dropped when she refused to testify.