Big Ben, serial lady violator

[SEC=UGA]

Amazing what can be overlooked when you have a super bowl ring....

 

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/12/no-ch...er-case/?hpt=T2

[dmarc117]

money helps cover up many o things

[BillyBalata]

or he's totally innocent.

 

nah, he's got money so you guys naturally hate him.

[matt770]

Sounds to me like some key facts are not in dispute -- Ben's party bought the girl shots, she was completely sh!tfaced, Ben's bodyguard who is an undercover cop led her into a bathroom with Ben and stood guard outside while the two of them had intercourse. So at worst he raped her which cannot be proven, but at best, he took advantage of a drunk 20-year-old coed. Not a huge difference in my estimation.

[SEC=UGA]

or he's totally innocent.

 

nah, he's got money so you guys naturally hate him.

 

No, I hate him because he nailed a hot 20 yo... And of course he has dashingly good looks and a rocket arm.

[twiley]

Or she actually thought he "liked" her then felt betrayed after he gave it to her good upside the towel dispenser then left her there scrambling for her underwear as he walked out, so she felt she needed to get back at him.

 

Goes both ways fellas - we'll never know the truth so let's not be quick to judge.

Edited April 12, 2010 by twiley

[dmarc117]

he is a pos rapist. the girl had dna in her. and bigben paid her off, classy guy you pitt fans have!!

[Skippy]

Sounds to me like some key facts are not in dispute -- Ben's party bought the girl shots, she was completely sh!tfaced, Ben's bodyguard who is an undercover cop led her into a bathroom with Ben and stood guard outside while the two of them had intercourse. So at worst he raped her which cannot be proven, but at best, he took advantage of a drunk 20-year-old coed. Not a huge difference in my estimation.

I am not going to say anything more other than this is pretty spot on. The advantage part can be looked at differently as that girl was drinking her ass off with the party and it kills me to say this with a 20 year-old of my own but you have got to know what you are doing.

 

One thing that I know and want to put out there is that Ben was not sipping tea in the corner waiting to get the 20 year old drunk. It was a party and the guy with deep pockets was keeping the drinks flowing. Some of my worst decisions have been made under the influence of alcohol.

[detlef]

or he's totally innocent.

 

nah, he's got money so you guys naturally hate him.

Let's just assume that this sex was as consensual as it can be with a girl who's nearly blacked out drunk. If this was a guy I knew, who had already been accused of sexual assault and then did this, let's just say I'd think he was a total POS. If he were a friend, well let's just say he wouldn't be anymore. When I was 20, I had plenty of "friends" who were total d-bags but you were 20 so just partied with them anyway. At a point, there's just no room for that anymore.

 

As far as the money is concerned. Of course I would love to have it. However, I would not change places with guys like Ben if it meant that I had to forfeit half my brain cells and, it seems, any ability to recognize what one should and shouldn't do.

[westvirginia]

I am anything but a The only 6 time Super Bowl Winners and YOUR DADDY fan, but it sounds to me like Ben likess to party and bang chicks when he parties. I'm not so sure this is rape, and if not for the incident in NV (or wherever) last year this may have never come to light.

[detlef]

I am anything but a The only 6 time Super Bowl Winners and YOUR DADDY fan, but it sounds to me like Ben likess to party and bang chicks when he parties. I'm not so sure this is rape, and if not for the incident in NV (or wherever) last year this may have never come to light.

Is that a new filter?

[westvirginia]

Is that a new filter?

 

Yes - for the misspelling of steelers with ea...

[matt770]

Let's just assume that this sex was as consensual as it can be with a girl who's nearly blacked out drunk. If this was a guy I knew, who had already been accused of sexual assault and then did this, let's just say I'd think he was a total POS. If he were a friend, well let's just say he wouldn't be anymore.

 

Yup. And I would have a few questions for the undercover cop who should be protecting this girl and protecting Ben from himself. Instead it sounds like he facilitated the whole thing. There is a lot wrong with this whole scene, the more we learn about it.

[detlef]

Yup. And I would have a few questions for the undercover cop who should be protecting this girl and protecting Ben from himself. Instead it sounds like he facilitated the whole thing. There is a lot wrong with this whole scene, the more we learn about it.

And then there's that. I mean, what the eff?

[Skippy]

This really sucks and more and more everyday it is sounding worse and worse for Ben.

 

Local news just reported on a statement given by an attorney in Boston this morning. That report was about a 3rd girl with the exact same story as this most recent one from about six months ago in Vegas.

 

Understand that Ben is going in front of Goodell today and now there is this third allegation. Ben is really sounding like a POS total tool at this point.

[dmarc117]

This really sucks and more and more everyday it is sounding worse and worse for Ben.

 

Local news just reported on a statement given by an attorney in Boston this morning. That report was about a 3rd girl with the exact same story as this most recent one from about six months ago in Vegas.

 

Understand that Ben is going in front of Goodell today and now there is this third allegation. Ben is really sounding like a POS total tool at this point.

 

 

the rooneys seem pretty stand up. do they cut this guy?

[Savage Beatings]

the rooneys seem pretty stand up. do they cut this guy?

 

I would say not a chance. Suspend him yes, but cut him, I seriously doubt it. If he ever acutally gets charged, then I could see cutting him. But until then, he'll continue to be coddled with a stern warning thrown in here and there for appearances.

[SEC=UGA]

I'm waiting for the civil suits to start before making any judgements. The answers should start to come out at that point.

 

On another note, Tiger paid 10 large to a chick he had consensual sex with, how much will Ben have to pay to a girl that claims she was sexually assaulted by him?

[SEC=UGA]

MILLEDGEVILLE -- Shielded by two police buddies during an evening of bar-hopping in a Georgia college town, Ben Roethlisberger would acquire a third ally in blue after a college sophomore claimed that she was raped by the Pittsburgh Steelers star that night.

 

Enlarge photo Union-Recorder Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger (right) poses with Milledgeville police Sgt. Jerry Blash during his visit March 5. Blash wrote the initial police report about an assault.

 

According to witnesses aligned with both the accuser and accused, Milledgeville police Sgt. Jerry Blash demonstrated little patience with the alleged victim, a 20-year-old Georgia College & State University student, or her claims that she was assaulted at a nightclub early on the morning of March 5 by the NFL star.

 

Roethlisberger, meanwhile, was barely pressed by Blash, the night commander, who had his picture taken with the two-time Super Bowl champ earlier that evening.

 

Vivid details of the encounter between Blash and the accuser emerge from an examination of a 500-plus-page case file on the incident compiled by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The report and interviews with attorneys for Roethlisberger and the accuser, the district attorney for the Milledgeville area and other legal experts show that the investigation into the woman’s claim of sexual assault was compromised from the start.

 

“We’ve got a big problem. We’ve got a big problem. We’ve got a big problem!” Blash, 35, told fellow Officers Richard Davidson and Jason Lopez during a hastily arranged huddle at the Capital City club, where the woman claimed she had been assaulted. The accuser, accompanied by two sorority sisters, had just reported the assault to Blash, who wasn’t convinced.

 

Her friends did most of the talking, Blash later told the GBI. The alleged victim, he said, was “very nonchalant.” He asked her if she had been raped. According to the sergeant, she said no. Her account of what happened in the club’s bathroom would change, as would Blash’s recollection of what was said that night.

 

 

Quarterback alerted

 

After hearing the young woman’s story, Blash quickly notified Roethlisberger and his group of her allegation. The sergeant, who has since resigned amid an internal investigation into his behavior, approached two of the quarterback’s associates, Pennsylvania lawmen Anthony Barravecchio and Edward Joyner, and told them what had transpired.

 

Barravecchio, a Coraopolis, Pa., officer assigned to a federal Drug Enforcement Administration task force, said Blash told them: “We have a problem, this drunken [expletive], drunk off her ass, is accusing Ben of rape.”

 

In a separate interview with the GBI, Joyner, a veteran Pennsylvania state police officer and a friend and “assistant” to Roethlisberger, confirmed Barravecchio’s account.

 

“The way she says it happened, there is no way,” Blash told Joyner. “There is no way it could have happened,” adding that the accuser had changed her story several times.

 

The woman seemed unsure at first of what exactly had happened, Blash told the GBI. The officer asked if she had been raped and she responded, “No.” He then asked her if she and Roethlisberger had sex and she said, “Well, I’m not sure.”

 

She “talked all over the place,” Blash said.

 

The woman told Lopez the sex took place when she was sitting on the toilet in the club’s cramped bathroom. “Blash advised that the toilet was low and Roethlisberger was 6’5” so Blash did not know how that could of occurred,” the GBI report states.

 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not naming the woman because she is an alleged sexual assault victim.

 

 

Accusation doubted

 

The accuser’s encounter with the Milledgeville lawmen occurred moments after she and her two Zeta Tau Alpha sisters left the Capital City club looking to make a report. An officer they found directed them to Blash. What followed was a tense, sometimes confrontational exchange, according to all the parties involved.

 

To Blash, the accuser was heavily intoxicated and uncertain what had happened. Her friends, Nicole Biancofiore and Ann Marie Lubatti, “got on his nerves.”

 

The disdain was mutual. Biancofiore and Lubatti told the GBI that Blash never took their friend’s accusation seriously.

 

According to Biancofiore, the sergeant told them he would file a report but warned them they were wasting their time. Lubatti told the GBI that Blash advised, “You can file a statement but this man has a lot of money and good attorneys.”

 

That angered the accuser, her friends said. She asked, in a raised voice, whether she should just forget she was raped and not file charges. The sergeant became defensive, Lubatti said, accusing the alleged victim of trying to put words in his mouth.

 

The brief exchange ended on a sour note, and two days later, the alleged victim’s attorney, Lee Parks, told a GBI agent the woman’s family didn’t want “anyone from the Milledgeville police coming to their residence for any reason.”

 

Former DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan reviewed the GBI documents at the request of the AJC.

 

“With that kind of attitude, what victim would want to go through with a prosecution?” Morgan said. “After the way she was treated, it was going to be hard to move forward with this case.”

 

 

A series of lapses

 

In the coming days, investigators and prosecutors would be confronted with inconsistent statements, a botched crime scene and serious witness problems.

 

On Monday, March 8, a meeting between Milledgeville police Chief Woodrow Blue and GBI Special Agent in Charge Tommy Davis was interrupted by a phone call from Roethlisberger’s recently hired attorney, Ed Garland.

 

According to the GBI investigative file, Garland said “he was familiar with statements made by the initial responding officer to Roethlisberger and his group that the officer called the victim a drunk [expletive] and stated he did not believe her story.” It was the first they had heard of the exchange.

 

The next day they met with District Attorney Fred Bright, who was “very concerned” about the alleged statements. Already, it appeared, the prosecution was in trouble.

 

The situation called to mind another NFL star represented by Garland and his law partner, Don Samuel: Ray Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens, who was charged 10 years ago with the murder of two Decatur men during a street brawl in Buckhead.

 

Garland managed to win over jurors with his Southern charm while staging a withering public defense of his client. He called news conferences and denounced the charges against Lewis, who later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Two co-defendants were acquitted.

 

This time, Garland employed a quieter strategy, avoiding any criticism of law enforcement. He issued a statement that Roethlisberger was “completely innocent” and expressed confidence the facts would acquit his client.

 

Blash could have been a significant asset for the defense. In his interview with GBI agent Carmichael, he admitted denigrating the accuser.

 

It wouldn’t be the Police Department’s only mistake. The crime scene was never sealed off, and 12 hours after the alleged assault occurred, the club’s janitor swabbed the bathroom with Clorox and Pine-Sol..

 

In another lapse, Roethlisberger was never actually questioned. Blash spoke with the quarterback at the Capital City club, along with his agent and two bodyguards. But Roethlisberger was hardly engaged, spending most of the time on his phone, according to the sergeant.

 

Regardless, Blash took another step to minimize the incident involving football player, 28. He told the GBI he completed a “non-detailed incident report” so as not to alert the news media.

 

Bright told the AJC his decision not to prosecute was influenced by variety of factors. “I don’t want to quantify, but it was the totality of everything,” he said, citing the woman’s changing story, her state of intoxication and Blash’s actions.

 

“Being the first officer on the scene means that, normally, he’d be one of the first witnesses,” Bright said. “Clearly, Blash didn’t believe her.”

 

In addition, DNA evidence was inconclusive.

 

Bright also had been sent a letter on March 17 from the accuser’s lawyers, Parks and David Walbert, asking him to drop the case. A criminal trial would be “a very intrusive personal experience ... given the extraordinary media attention that would be inevitable,” the letter said, adding it did not reflect any recanting of the allegations by their client.

 

Parks declined to say whether there had been any monetary settlement over potential civil claims his client could have been brought against Roethlisberger, who signed an eight-year, $102 million contract in 2008.

 

Said Parks, “I can’t comment on that.”

 

 

AJC staff writers Rhonda Cook and Katie Leslie contributed to this article.

[SEC=UGA]

“Ben-a-Palooza” 2010 was getting stale.

 

Each year, Pittsburgh Steelers star Ben Roethlisberger takes friends on a trip to celebrate his birthday. This year, on Feb. 28, he hired a luxury bus to ferry him and a dozen buddies from his Pittsburgh home to his house on Lake Oconee in Georgia.

 

Four days later, on March 4, some of the revelers had gone home and the others had grown tired, spending the day hanging out at the house and hitting golf balls into the lake. That evening, they headed to a sushi restaurant, but Roethlisberger was looking for something more interesting. He texted a local man for suggestions.

 

“Is Milledgeville dead tonight?” he asked. “Where should we go?”

 

The Velvet Elvis Supper Club and Capital City club, the man suggested, adding “it’s all college kids.”

 

“OK cool,” the 28-year-old Roethlisberger responded, “we just want a new scene tonight.”

 

That evening, a group of college girls had much the same plan, though the Milledgeville bars weren’t a “new scene” for them. The block of brick buildings and bars in the center of town is a well-worn route for students of Georgia College & State University, a historic institution growing in popularity with metro Atlanta students.

 

The group of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sisters had a twist on the Thursday night bar hop — first they would attend a friend’s birthday party at her off-campus apartment. To liven things up, the hostess served vodka-laced Jell-O shots and assigned guests name tags with raunchy labels.

 

On one chatty 20-year-old sophomore Zeta, the hostess stuck a tag with an abbreviation for a vulgar phrase suggesting she was sexually available.

 

The two groups then set on their nightly rounds. During the evening, they would cross paths in three bars. By the end of the night, the sophomore with the raunchy name tag was leveling accusations of sexual assault against the star athlete.

 

Less than 12 hours after telling police, the allegation showed up on the gossip site TMZ, setting off a media frenzy in this quaint town 80 miles southeast of Atlanta. After a five-week investigation, District Attorney Fred Bright decided there was not enough evidence to prove a case and chose not to prosecute.

 

But the 500-plus-page Georgia Bureau of Investigation report on the incident, released April 16, contained enough evidence for the NFL to suspend Roethlisberger for six games last week.

 

Various details of what happened that night have been reported since the GBI report was made public. But this account provides details not previously published and paints a fuller picture of what occurred in Milledgeville that night.

 

This story is based on the GBI’s written accounts of dozens of interviews given to their agents by those on hand that night. The accounts of these interviews are contained in the GBI report.

 

 

 

The Zeta sisters spent at least an hour at the birthday party before heading to the Velvet Elvis, a tap popular because of its $1 drink night. The Zeta gang had no trouble getting drinks; several had fake IDs. Thursday is a party night for GC&SU students, many of whom head home for the weekend.

 

It was after 11 p.m. and the atmosphere was electric. Text messages had alerted many students to the news that Roethlisberger and his entourage had arrived, and they began flocking to the bar to get a glimpse of the two-time Super Bowl champion. In fact, the alleged victim (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not naming her because she is an alleged sexual assault victim) sent out 30 text messages between 11 p.m. and midnight, roughly the time she spent at that bar.

 

The Zetas sidled up to the 6-foot-5, 241-pound star and posed for pictures, as did other boozy fans.

 

Roethlisberger asked what year the girls wearing name tags were in. Sophomores, one said. Sorority sister Victoria Garofalo told Willie Colon, a Steelers tackle standing next to his quarterback friend, that she was 19 and her friends were 20.

 

As the throng in the bar got larger and more insistent for photos and autographs, Edward Joyner and Tony Barravecchio formed a “protective pod” around the quarterback. Joyner, a veteran Pennsylvania State policeman, has been a friend and “assistant” to Roethlisberger for five years. He said Roethlisberger’s life “got difficult” from the fame that accompanied winning his first Super Bowl. The two cops say they try to protect him from bad publicity, like making sure no one shoots photos of him drinking.

 

Sorority sister Aliesha Scholten asked Roethlisberger why he was he was at Velvet Elvis. It’s a “freshman bar,” she told him. Go across the street to The Brick. It’s bigger and has an older crowd. And she and her friends were going there.

 

 

Fans and ‘Jager bombs’

 

Roethlisberger’s group did just that, finding seats at the expansive tavern-restaurant. Zeta sister Lesley Chesnutt recalls the bartender making Roethlisberger numerous “Jager bombs,” Jagermeister liquor and Red Bull energy drink.

 

The quarterback became a sort of Pied Piper of Milledgeville. At least 20 patrons from Velvet Elvis followed him to The Brick, which swelled with customers as word of his presence spread.

 

Garofalo and the Zeta sophomore with the suggestive name tag sidled up to Roethlisberger, who asked what the letters on the tag stood for. When she told him, Roethlisberger responded that he liked sex, Garofalo told investigators. The unnamed Zeta sophomore drank at least one of the Jager Bombs placed in front of Roethlisberger, another friend said.

 

One of the sorority sisters asked Roethlisberger if he wanted to go to the Zeta house.

 

“Hell no, that’s a LWTH,” Roethlisberger responded — a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen.

 

Roethlisberger is no stranger to thorny lawsuits. Last July, he was sued by a Lake Tahoe casino hostess who claimed he sexually assaulted her in 2008. She did not file a criminal complaint. He called the allegations “false and vicious.”

 

Colon, a 315-pound Steelers offensive tackle, said the girl with the raunchy name tag kept trying to get Roethlisberger’s attention, including pinching him. The quarterback was getting annoyed by the crowd and the requests for photos, especially when people kept taking pictures of him drinking.

 

Roethlisberger’s group left The Brick to walk around the corner to Capital City, a dark, warehouse-like dance club that comes alive after midnight.

 

 

In VIP area, women only

 

Milledgeville Sgt. Jerry Blash, who oversees city officers working the party district, asked to have his photo shot with Roethlisberger, and later accompanied his group to Capital City as a throng of about 50 people followed.

 

At Capital City, the Roethlisberger party was shown to a VIP area where they could better control contact with others. Colon complained they were surrounded by too many guys at the previous bars. The lineman said the group often deals with jealous boyfriends during bar-hopping, and has found it easier to just to keep men out.

 

Estimates of the number of young women in the VIP area that night ranged from 15 to 25. At one point, witnesses said, Roethlisberger held a tray of Patron tequila shots and yelled, “All my bitches, come take a shot.” One young woman told him he needed “to learn how to talk to women” and stormed out. Another, though, thought he was just having fun.

 

Roethlisberger apparently kept hitting on the women around him.

 

Katie Cromie, a friend of a Zeta sister, said Roethlisberger kept telling her she “had her stuff together” and asked her to go home with him, but she made excuses. Other girls, though, were “throwing themselves” at him, she said.

 

Cromie met Zeta sister Aliesha Scholten, who told her Roethlisberger had gotten angry and kicked her out of the VIP area because she’d told her friend, the alleged victim, not to go into a back room with the quarterback.

 

Zeta sister Nicole Biancofiore said she was in the VIP area when she saw the same girl being guided to a back hallway by one of the “bodyguards.” Still, she said, her friend looked like she was having fun. A few seconds later, Roethlisberger followed her into the hallway, she said. Zeta sister Ann Marie Lubatti turned to Biancofiore and said, “Did you see that?”

 

 

‘My friend has to leave’

 

Lubatti said she approached Joyner, the Pennsylvania police officer. “She doesn’t need to be back there,” she told him. But Joyner would not look at her, she said.

 

As Joyner recalled things, he was asked by Roethlisberger to kick a girl out of the VIP area and returned to find a girl approaching him saying, “My friend has to leave. She’s back there with Ben.” He said he looked down the hallway but did not see them.

 

Barravechio, the other Pennsylvania officer with Roethlisberger, said the quarterback called him over and asked him to show the girl to the bathroom, so he opened the door and walked down the hall. The girl was giggling, he said, and then just sat on a bar stool rather than walk into the bathroom. He thought it was strange.

 

Minutes later, Roethlisberger left the hallway through a back area. The alleged victim soon followed and, Biancofiore recalled, looked like she “had sobered up a lot and looked shocked and shaken up.”

 

The young woman, who by all accounts was extremely drunk, told her friends, “We need to go. We need to go.” She told them she had just had sex with Roethlisberger. They asked if it was consensual. “No,” she said.

 

Lubatti said her friend said she was sitting on a bar stool in the hall when Roethlisberger exposed himself to her. She said she told him, “No, we can’t do this. No, this isn’t right.” She said she tried to leave but walked into the bathroom, where Roethlisberger followed.

 

The alleged victim told her friends she did not want to report the incident because she felt embarrassed. Biancofiore, though, decided to call a friend who was a cop. He said to report the incident immediately.

 

 

Allegations doubted

 

At 2:20 a.m. the three Zeta sisters approached Blash, the Milledgeville officer. He recalled the alleged victim was “swaying, smelled of alcohol and talked all over the place.”

 

To the girls’ friends, it seemed like Blash was trying to talk them out of making charges, saying something like, “This man has a lot of money and you would be wasting your time.”

 

Those in Roethlisberger’s group remember Blash coming inside Capital City to tell them of the allegation: “The way she said it happened, there is no way,” Blash stated loudly. Blash told Roethlisberger the alleged victim’s friends were “talking for her.”

 

Blash’s derogatory remarks to Roethlisberger and his group about the alleged victim and his loudly voiced doubts about her truthfulness were factors the district attorney considered before deciding not to prosecute.

 

Blash, who has resigned, said Roethlisberger was at the bar talking with another woman when he entered. Roethlisberger angrily denied the allegations and left with his friends, driving back to his lake house.

 

The drive home, those in the vehicle said, was mostly quiet. The quarterback told one friend that he was in the back of the VIP area “messing around” with the girl when she fell. The friend took “messing around” to mean “kissing, whatever.”

 

Roethlisberger said he helped the girl up and then walked out.

 

The young woman quickly returned to her Atlanta-area home. Later, she and her family decided to not seek prosecution, citing the trauma a trial would bring, her lawyer wrote in a letter to the district attorney.

 

Ben-a-Palooza, meanwhile, was scheduled to continue until Saturday. Instead, the quarterback and his group caught a plane back to Pittsburgh Friday. At the airport, Roethlisberger’s parents were waiting for them.

[Delicious_bass]

“Ben-a-Palooza” 2010 was getting stale.

 

Each year, Pittsburgh Steelers star Ben Roethlisberger takes friends on a trip to celebrate his birthday. This year, on Feb. 28, he hired a luxury bus to ferry him and a dozen buddies from his Pittsburgh home to his house on Lake Oconee in Georgia.

 

Four days later, on March 4, some of the revelers had gone home and the others had grown tired, spending the day hanging out at the house and hitting golf balls into the lake. That evening, they headed to a sushi restaurant, but Roethlisberger was looking for something more interesting. He texted a local man for suggestions.

 

“Is Milledgeville dead tonight?” he asked. “Where should we go?”

 

The Velvet Elvis Supper Club and Capital City club, the man suggested, adding “it’s all college kids.”

 

“OK cool,” the 28-year-old Roethlisberger responded, “we just want a new scene tonight.”

 

That evening, a group of college girls had much the same plan, though the Milledgeville bars weren’t a “new scene” for them. The block of brick buildings and bars in the center of town is a well-worn route for students of Georgia College & State University, a historic institution growing in popularity with metro Atlanta students.

 

The group of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sisters had a twist on the Thursday night bar hop — first they would attend a friend’s birthday party at her off-campus apartment. To liven things up, the hostess served vodka-laced Jell-O shots and assigned guests name tags with raunchy labels.

 

On one chatty 20-year-old sophomore Zeta, the hostess stuck a tag with an abbreviation for a vulgar phrase suggesting she was sexually available.

 

The two groups then set on their nightly rounds. During the evening, they would cross paths in three bars. By the end of the night, the sophomore with the raunchy name tag was leveling accusations of sexual assault against the star athlete.

 

Less than 12 hours after telling police, the allegation showed up on the gossip site TMZ, setting off a media frenzy in this quaint town 80 miles southeast of Atlanta. After a five-week investigation, District Attorney Fred Bright decided there was not enough evidence to prove a case and chose not to prosecute.

 

But the 500-plus-page Georgia Bureau of Investigation report on the incident, released April 16, contained enough evidence for the NFL to suspend Roethlisberger for six games last week.

 

Various details of what happened that night have been reported since the GBI report was made public. But this account provides details not previously published and paints a fuller picture of what occurred in Milledgeville that night.

 

This story is based on the GBI’s written accounts of dozens of interviews given to their agents by those on hand that night. The accounts of these interviews are contained in the GBI report.

 

 

 

The Zeta sisters spent at least an hour at the birthday party before heading to the Velvet Elvis, a tap popular because of its $1 drink night. The Zeta gang had no trouble getting drinks; several had fake IDs. Thursday is a party night for GC&SU students, many of whom head home for the weekend.

 

It was after 11 p.m. and the atmosphere was electric. Text messages had alerted many students to the news that Roethlisberger and his entourage had arrived, and they began flocking to the bar to get a glimpse of the two-time Super Bowl champion. In fact, the alleged victim (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not naming her because she is an alleged sexual assault victim) sent out 30 text messages between 11 p.m. and midnight, roughly the time she spent at that bar.

 

The Zetas sidled up to the 6-foot-5, 241-pound star and posed for pictures, as did other boozy fans.

 

Roethlisberger asked what year the girls wearing name tags were in. Sophomores, one said. Sorority sister Victoria Garofalo told Willie Colon, a Steelers tackle standing next to his quarterback friend, that she was 19 and her friends were 20.

 

As the throng in the bar got larger and more insistent for photos and autographs, Edward Joyner and Tony Barravecchio formed a “protective pod” around the quarterback. Joyner, a veteran Pennsylvania State policeman, has been a friend and “assistant” to Roethlisberger for five years. He said Roethlisberger’s life “got difficult” from the fame that accompanied winning his first Super Bowl. The two cops say they try to protect him from bad publicity, like making sure no one shoots photos of him drinking.

 

Sorority sister Aliesha Scholten asked Roethlisberger why he was he was at Velvet Elvis. It’s a “freshman bar,” she told him. Go across the street to The Brick. It’s bigger and has an older crowd. And she and her friends were going there.

 

 

Fans and ‘Jager bombs’

 

Roethlisberger’s group did just that, finding seats at the expansive tavern-restaurant. Zeta sister Lesley Chesnutt recalls the bartender making Roethlisberger numerous “Jager bombs,” Jagermeister liquor and Red Bull energy drink.

 

The quarterback became a sort of Pied Piper of Milledgeville. At least 20 patrons from Velvet Elvis followed him to The Brick, which swelled with customers as word of his presence spread.

 

Garofalo and the Zeta sophomore with the suggestive name tag sidled up to Roethlisberger, who asked what the letters on the tag stood for. When she told him, Roethlisberger responded that he liked sex, Garofalo told investigators. The unnamed Zeta sophomore drank at least one of the Jager Bombs placed in front of Roethlisberger, another friend said.

 

One of the sorority sisters asked Roethlisberger if he wanted to go to the Zeta house.

 

“Hell no, that’s a LWTH,” Roethlisberger responded — a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen.

 

Roethlisberger is no stranger to thorny lawsuits. Last July, he was sued by a Lake Tahoe casino hostess who claimed he sexually assaulted her in 2008. She did not file a criminal complaint. He called the allegations “false and vicious.”

 

Colon, a 315-pound Steelers offensive tackle, said the girl with the raunchy name tag kept trying to get Roethlisberger’s attention, including pinching him. The quarterback was getting annoyed by the crowd and the requests for photos, especially when people kept taking pictures of him drinking.

 

Roethlisberger’s group left The Brick to walk around the corner to Capital City, a dark, warehouse-like dance club that comes alive after midnight.

 

 

In VIP area, women only

 

Milledgeville Sgt. Jerry Blash, who oversees city officers working the party district, asked to have his photo shot with Roethlisberger, and later accompanied his group to Capital City as a throng of about 50 people followed.

 

At Capital City, the Roethlisberger party was shown to a VIP area where they could better control contact with others. Colon complained they were surrounded by too many guys at the previous bars. The lineman said the group often deals with jealous boyfriends during bar-hopping, and has found it easier to just to keep men out.

 

Estimates of the number of young women in the VIP area that night ranged from 15 to 25. At one point, witnesses said, Roethlisberger held a tray of Patron tequila shots and yelled, “All my bitches, come take a shot.” One young woman told him he needed “to learn how to talk to women” and stormed out. Another, though, thought he was just having fun.

 

Roethlisberger apparently kept hitting on the women around him.

 

Katie Cromie, a friend of a Zeta sister, said Roethlisberger kept telling her she “had her stuff together” and asked her to go home with him, but she made excuses. Other girls, though, were “throwing themselves” at him, she said.

 

Cromie met Zeta sister Aliesha Scholten, who told her Roethlisberger had gotten angry and kicked her out of the VIP area because she’d told her friend, the alleged victim, not to go into a back room with the quarterback.

 

Zeta sister Nicole Biancofiore said she was in the VIP area when she saw the same girl being guided to a back hallway by one of the “bodyguards.” Still, she said, her friend looked like she was having fun. A few seconds later, Roethlisberger followed her into the hallway, she said. Zeta sister Ann Marie Lubatti turned to Biancofiore and said, “Did you see that?”

 

 

‘My friend has to leave’

 

Lubatti said she approached Joyner, the Pennsylvania police officer. “She doesn’t need to be back there,” she told him. But Joyner would not look at her, she said.

 

As Joyner recalled things, he was asked by Roethlisberger to kick a girl out of the VIP area and returned to find a girl approaching him saying, “My friend has to leave. She’s back there with Ben.” He said he looked down the hallway but did not see them.

 

Barravechio, the other Pennsylvania officer with Roethlisberger, said the quarterback called him over and asked him to show the girl to the bathroom, so he opened the door and walked down the hall. The girl was giggling, he said, and then just sat on a bar stool rather than walk into the bathroom. He thought it was strange.

 

Minutes later, Roethlisberger left the hallway through a back area. The alleged victim soon followed and, Biancofiore recalled, looked like she “had sobered up a lot and looked shocked and shaken up.”

 

The young woman, who by all accounts was extremely drunk, told her friends, “We need to go. We need to go.” She told them she had just had sex with Roethlisberger. They asked if it was consensual. “No,” she said.

 

Lubatti said her friend said she was sitting on a bar stool in the hall when Roethlisberger exposed himself to her. She said she told him, “No, we can’t do this. No, this isn’t right.” She said she tried to leave but walked into the bathroom, where Roethlisberger followed.

 

The alleged victim told her friends she did not want to report the incident because she felt embarrassed. Biancofiore, though, decided to call a friend who was a cop. He said to report the incident immediately.

 

 

Allegations doubted

 

At 2:20 a.m. the three Zeta sisters approached Blash, the Milledgeville officer. He recalled the alleged victim was “swaying, smelled of alcohol and talked all over the place.”

 

To the girls’ friends, it seemed like Blash was trying to talk them out of making charges, saying something like, “This man has a lot of money and you would be wasting your time.”

 

Those in Roethlisberger’s group remember Blash coming inside Capital City to tell them of the allegation: “The way she said it happened, there is no way,” Blash stated loudly. Blash told Roethlisberger the alleged victim’s friends were “talking for her.”

 

Blash’s derogatory remarks to Roethlisberger and his group about the alleged victim and his loudly voiced doubts about her truthfulness were factors the district attorney considered before deciding not to prosecute.

 

Blash, who has resigned, said Roethlisberger was at the bar talking with another woman when he entered. Roethlisberger angrily denied the allegations and left with his friends, driving back to his lake house.

 

The drive home, those in the vehicle said, was mostly quiet. The quarterback told one friend that he was in the back of the VIP area “messing around” with the girl when she fell. The friend took “messing around” to mean “kissing, whatever.”

 

Roethlisberger said he helped the girl up and then walked out.

 

The young woman quickly returned to her Atlanta-area home. Later, she and her family decided to not seek prosecution, citing the trauma a trial would bring, her lawyer wrote in a letter to the district attorney.

 

Ben-a-Palooza, meanwhile, was scheduled to continue until Saturday. Instead, the quarterback and his group caught a plane back to Pittsburgh Friday. At the airport, Roethlisberger’s parents were waiting for them.

Let me start by saying no one deserves to be raped. If it really happened and she really didnt want it to, that's awful. That said, sounds as though (at the very least) her and her friends made some pretty poor decisions and put themselves in a spot for something bad to happen. Again, I am not saying she got what she deserved or anything stupid like that. And I am not excusing BR in any way if he indeed did what he's been accused of. I am just saying this girl (and her friends) need to be a little smarter and could have likely prevented the whole thing if they had not been somewhere they shouldnt have been doing something they werent supposed to be doing.

[Azazello1313]

Zeta sister Nicole Biancofiore said she was in the VIP area when she saw the same girl being guided to a back hallway by one of the “bodyguards.” Still, she said, her friend looked like she was having fun. A few seconds later, Roethlisberger followed her into the hallway, she said. Zeta sister Ann Marie Lubatti turned to Biancofiore and said, “Did you see that?”

 

 

‘My friend has to leave’

 

Lubatti said she approached Joyner, the Pennsylvania police officer. “She doesn’t need to be back there,” she told him. But Joyner would not look at her, she said.

 

As Joyner recalled things, he was asked by Roethlisberger to kick a girl out of the VIP area and returned to find a girl approaching him saying, “My friend has to leave. She’s back there with Ben.” He said he looked down the hallway but did not see them.

 

Barravechio, the other Pennsylvania officer with Roethlisberger, said the quarterback called him over and asked him to show the girl to the bathroom, so he opened the door and walked down the hall. The girl was giggling, he said, and then just sat on a bar stool rather than walk into the bathroom. He thought it was strange.

 

Minutes later, Roethlisberger left the hallway through a back area. The alleged victim soon followed and, Biancofiore recalled, looked like she “had sobered up a lot and looked shocked and shaken up.”

...

The drive home, those in the vehicle said, was mostly quiet. The quarterback told one friend that he was in the back of the VIP area “messing around” with the girl when she fell. The friend took “messing around” to mean “kissing, whatever.”

 

Roethlisberger said he helped the girl up and then walked out.

 

that all seems very suspicious in its blatant dishonesty. I mean, it's pretty much beyond dispute at this point that ben had sex with the chick, right? why on earth would he tell his buddies they were "messing around" and she "fell"? but you know, if there's anyone in this whole story I'd really like to see in jail, it's not even drunk-ass poonhound ben so much as these doushbag bodyguard/cop/leech enablers.

Edited April 26, 2010 by Azazello1313

[matt770]

that all seems very suspicious in its blatant dishonesty. I mean, it's pretty much beyond dispute at this point that ben had sex with the chick, right? why on earth would he tell his buddies they were "messing around" and she "fell"? but you know, if there's anyone in this whole story I'd really like to see in jail, it's not even drunk-ass poonhound ben so much as these doushbag bodyguard/cop/leech enablers.

 

I read somewhere that one of the cops is in danger of losing his job, but it has to be a unanimous vote by the city council and then he has a chance to appeal. Of course his lawyer is saying there are no grounds to fire him, and there is a union involved also.

 

The girl exercised poor judgment, no doubt about it. Alcohol takes away your ability to make smart decisions, but you are still responsible for your own actions 100% of the time. That said, if this went down as described in the report, Ben is a sick Penny Lane and 100% guily of rape in my opinion. He dodged a huge bullet that there is no physical evidence to convict him, and hopefully he gets help and doesn't victimize anyone else.

[Menudo]

Please stop bumping any threads that have anything to do with our punk-ass QB or these incidents. Thanks in advance.

[Azazello1313]

bump