Serena Williams Apologizes For Saying Steubenville Rape Victim Shouldn't Have Put Herself In That Position

16-year-old was gang-raped by football players at a high school party

Serena Williams was forced to issue a full apology for saying that the 16 year-old victim of a gang-rape had been "lucky" and "shouldn't have put herself in that position" after her comments provoked a furious backlash which threatened to overshadow the tennis champion's defence of her Wimbledon crown.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the world number one women's player questioned the sentences received by two high school football players who sexually abused a drunk girl at a party in August last year, while other students distributed pictures and video footage on social media.

Comments

[Greg]

Um, it seems to me that she said a little more than that. Some other relevant quotes from the interview:

"Do you think it was fair, what they got?"

That the convicted rapists merely "did something stupid". I suppose that technically it was "stupid", but it was also a lot more than that it would seem.

And in her apology in the link (which she had plenty of time to think about and prepare) she refers to already convicted rapists as "the accused".

If all she'd said was "the girl made a bad decision before all of this awful, criminal shit happened to her" it would be a very different message. I don't know if it would have gotten a different response, but let's not change what she said about the case into something it wasn't just to find out.