Hope Solo and domestic Violence.

[pixy0stix]

No one is talking about it because it wasn't reported. Not everything gets reported, it happens. Now that people know, appropriate outrage can be had.

[Deleted]

Because it's soccer. I mean I heard about it but most of the country doesn't give two shits about who Hope Solo is outside of flag waving rah rah time. If she beat down her stepsister and nephew in the lead up to the World Cup it would get more attention.

I do think the fact that she's a woman has benefited her to some extent but the majority of the reason is that it's soccer and women's soccer no less.

[gpw]

I swear I remember hearing something about this. It sounds familiar. Either way, I would guess since it didn't garner national media attention when it happened, it wasn't acted on, I suppose. If Ray Rice, et. al. hadn't been national news would they all be suspended?

[meshaliuknits]

I thought that "Hope Solo" was asdfjkl's way of uploading her extra homework on why Han Solo doesn't suck and make it harder to google.

[penguingrrl]

Had I known about it I would have had the same reaction I had to the NFL players. But soccer doesn't have that much traction in the US so I would venture to guess nobody picked up the story so nobody knew about it. I have never heard of Hope Solo, although I had never heard of Ray Rice or Adrian Peterson before their stories broke either (we aren't football people).

[StrawberryBlondie]

I heard something about it. I don't remember what though.

[IIOY]

First of all, DV is wrong no matter who perpetrates it. Full stop, end of story. If Hope Solo did this, she should be done and in jail.

Second, I am SO FUCKING SICK of men responding to outrage about atrocities against women by screaming, "BUT WHAT ABOUT US?" This is not a zero-sum game, you fuckheads. A focus on DV benefits everyone.

Moreover, if you actually gave a good goddamn about this issue aside from being self-centered, entitled meatsticks, you would have been screaming about it before Ray Rice, so STFU and STFD.

[gpw]

Sept 19, 2014 15:30:38 GMT -5 IIOY said:

First of all, DV is wrong no matter who perpetrates it. Full stop, end of story. If Hope Solo did this, she should be done and in jail.

Second, I am SO FUCKING SICK of men responding to outrage about atrocities against women by screaming, "BUT WHAT ABOUT US?" This is not a zero-sum game, you fuckheads. A focus on DV benefits everyone.

Moreover, if you actually gave a good goddamn about this issue aside from being self-centered, entitled meatsticks, you would have been screaming about it before Ray Rice, so STFU and STFD.

ETA:  Also this:

[Deleted]

Isn't this an old story?

I'm pretty sure when it happened, her publicist came out and said that her step sister was the one who cause the violence or something along those lines?

Since I follow soccer, at the time it happened, she was kind of flogged, but like I said I think they day after they said it was misinformation.

[pumpkin]

Sept 19, 2014 14:55:51 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

No one is talking about it because it wasn't reported. Not everything gets reported, it happens. Now that people know, appropriate outrage can be had.

I'm just a lurker here, but she was arrested and at the time it was a pretty big news story in the Seattle area for a few days.

[memenee]

It didn't garner any attention, I'm sure, because the average person has no clue who Hope Solo is. And the NFL is a huge money making empire with someone like Ray Rice making millions every year. Sadly, women's soccer is pretty much a non-entity here and Hope Solo was probably lucky to have made $50k/year from women's soccer and possibly a million or so from one-time deals immediately following the World Cup.

I'll have to google but I'm pretty sure she had a restraining order against her husband - he was either an NFL or NBA player and apparently roughed her up pretty good before they married.

As pp said though, domestic violence is domestic violence.

[msmerymac]

This might be a basic question, but what result are they looking for? Is she a permanent member of the US national team? Is she pulling down a salary from USA soccer or something? I thought the national team was just picked around Olympic or World Cup time and not an all-the-time thing.

[memenee]

Yeah, Hope married a real peach.

Professional football player.

Jerramy Ryan Stevens (born November 13, 1979) is a former American football tight end. Overshadowing his football career were numerous arrests and legal problems, dating back to an assault conviction soon following his graduation from high school. In 2004, Stevens settled a lawsuit from a University of Washington student who accused him of rape four years earlier. Stevens has also been arrested for multiple DUIs, traffic violations, and other incidents since his college football career.

[Deleted]

Sept 19, 2014 15:54:04 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

This might be a basic question, but what result are they looking for? Is she a permanent member of the US national team? Is she pulling down a salary from USA soccer or something? I thought the national team was just picked around Olympic or World Cup time and not an all-the-time thing.

Yes she's on the national team. Has been since 2000 I think. 

The national team competes outside of just the Olympics and World Cup. 

ETA: The women's team played last night and I believe the men's team played last week. 

[downtoearth]

We were talking about it for awhile in our house. Honestly, more from a place of shock that a women's soccer role model would beat up her own sister and nephew. I think the nephew was 17, so I'm thinking this was a pretty serious assault by Hope and I know it had something to do with alcohol and Hope being pissed at her husband (who is a former or current NFL player... not sure). Plus, I guess she's not very welcome in her family - even before this incident. None of this excuses her, just shows that we did talk about it, but not to the extent of the Ray Rice DV... I think some of that is b/c it's recurring theme in the NFL players and partially b/c nobody cares about soccer, but also a big part is that it was a woman beating up her family and maybe women get more of a pass on judgment as outliers and since DV doesn't appear to be a systemic problem with women athletes.

[downtoearth]

Woah, I just googled and there is a lot of info on Hope's DV...

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2014/06/24/hope-solo-arrest-nephew-says-she-was-drinking-called-him-fat-and-unathletic/

"Police wrote in the affidavit that the teen’s T-shirt was torn and he had scratch marks on his arms and a bleeding cut on his ear when officers arrived.

The teen told police the altercation began as he discussed theatrical productions he’d been in, the affidavit says. The teen explained that he believes that a good actor has to have an “athletic state of mind.”

Solo then told him he was “too fat and overweight and crazy to ever be an athlete,” according to the court document.

The teen responded by calling Solo a name, told her to get out of the house and then walked into another part of the house. Solo followed him and called him crazy again, the document says.

He told Solo that she and her father were crazy, according to the affidavit. Solo charged him, punched him in the face and tackled him, the court document alleges.

When the teen’s mother tried to intervene, Solo attacked her as well, the document says. The teen tried to pull Solo off his mother and then broke a wooden broom over her head, the document says.

Court documents say the 17-year-old “got an old gun that did not work” and pointed it at her in an attempt to get her to stop assaulting him and his mother and to leave. The handgun was ultimately determined by police to be a broken BB gun.

Solo would not leave, however, and was “circling like a shark,” the teen told police.

According to the affidavit, Solo’s half-sister got her out of the house, but Solo then walked around it, hopped over a fence and re-entered through a sliding door."

[gpw]

Sept 19, 2014 16:03:59 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

Woah, I just googled and there is a lot of info on Hope's DV...

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2014/06/24/hope-solo-arrest-nephew-says-she-was-drinking-called-him-fat-and-unathletic/

"Police wrote in the affidavit that the teen’s T-shirt was torn and he had scratch marks on his arms and a bleeding cut on his ear when officers arrived.

The teen told police the altercation began as he discussed theatrical productions he’d been in, the affidavit says. The teen explained that he believes that a good actor has to have an “athletic state of mind.”

Solo then told him he was “too fat and overweight and crazy to ever be an athlete,” according to the court document.

The teen responded by calling Solo a name, told her to get out of the house and then walked into another part of the house. Solo followed him and called him crazy again, the document says.

He told Solo that she and her father were crazy, according to the affidavit. Solo charged him, punched him in the face and tackled him, the court document alleges.

When the teen’s mother tried to intervene, Solo attacked her as well, the document says. The teen tried to pull Solo off his mother and then broke a wooden broom over her head, the document says.

Court documents say the 17-year-old “got an old gun that did not work” and pointed it at her in an attempt to get her to stop assaulting him and his mother and to leave. The handgun was ultimately determined by police to be a broken BB gun.

Solo would not leave, however, and was “circling like a shark,” the teen told police.

According to the affidavit, Solo’s half-sister got her out of the house, but Solo then walked around it, hopped over a fence and re-entered through a sliding door."

[Nonny]

Hope Solo was arrested and booked into jail. She's currently out and awaiting trial (in November) for the two counts of 4th degree domestic violence.

blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/06/soccer-star-hope-solo-pleads-not-guilty-to-domestic-violence-charges  

sports.yahoo.com/news/hope-solo-trial-date-set-192651498--sow.html

[Deleted]

I've been thinking about this since I saw it and you know what, it's not that I think Hope Solo doesn't matter. I know when I first saw the story I thought, welp, that's a crazy bitch. They best put her angry ass in jail.

The issue is that you can feeeeeeeeeeeeel people trying to play stupid games by saying, well what about Hope Solo, huh? Bet you don't care about that.

The mention of Hope Solo in this fashion is basically the DV version of "how come black folks don't care when kids get shot in Chicago?"

It's actually a combination of that and an extension of "I watched the tape and it looked like Janay hit Ray Rice first." Because you know, women are the problem. See, women can be angry too. I bet Janay got made like Hope Solo did and Ray was just trying to keep her crazy ass from beating him.

If I remember correctly, we discussed Hope on the board when she got picked up for this. We decided she was crazy. But you know what, this is not the epidemic of domestic violence. It just isn't. It's a completely different type of psychology, a different issue, a different response. Hope Solo assaulted people in her own family. The cops showed up, arrested her ass, and there you go.

But child abuse and intimate partner abuse are not the same thing as assault. They just aren't. I don't know if Hope Solo beats these people on the regular. I don't know if this is merely the first time she's been caught. But when people beat their spouse, beat their children and get caught, it's because they do it all the fucking time under cover and in the dark. I guarantee you neither Solo's stepsister or nephew thought this was something they had to cover up, something that only happens because they deserved it.

So sure, let's talk about how the soccer world is going to respond. But let's not pretend these are the same fucking issues AT ALL.

[Deleted]

I think the bitch should be kicked out of whatever league she is in. I remember when the story came out.