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    Luis Rubiales, Spain’s Top Soccer Official, Resigns Over World Cup Kiss

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    Pressure had been building on Luis Rubiales, with prosecutors opening an investigation, his soccer federation calling for him to step down and FIFA suspending him.The head of the Spanish soccer federation, Luis Rubiales, resigned on Sunday, weeks after kissing a member of Spain’s women’s team on the lips after the team won the World Cup last month, setting off a national scandal and drawing accusations of abusing his power and perpetuating sexism in the sport.In a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday, Mr. Rubiales said he had submitted his resignation as the federation’s president and as vice president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.“After the rapid suspension carried out by FIFA, plus the rest of proceedings open against me, it is evident that I will not be able to return to my position,” he wrote. “My daughters, my family and the people who love me have suffered the effects of persecution excessively, as well as many falsehoods, but it is also true that in the street, the truth is prevailing more every day.”Mr. Rubiales, 46, was largely unrepentant about his actions, but pressure had grown on him and the group he leads, known formally as the Royal Spanish Football Federation, and it became clear that his position was untenable as the outrage against him showed no signs of abating.Spanish prosecutors opened a sexual assault case on Friday after the player Jennifer Hermoso, who said she was made to feel “vulnerable” and a “victim of an attack” when he kissed her, filed a formal complaint, and there were signs of opposition to his continued presence at the top of Spanish soccer at every turn.The soccer federation had called for him to resign “immediately,” female players had said they would not take the field for the national team as long as he was in charge, the men’s team had condemned his actions, and FIFA, soccer’s governing body, had suspended him for 90 days.Some commentators have described the events as a watershed moment in Spain’s #MeToo movement, as they put a spotlight on a divide between traditions of machismo and more recent progressivism that placed Spain in the European vanguard on issues of feminism and equality.The controversy centers on the conduct of Mr. Rubiales, who kissed Ms. Hermoso, one of the team’s star players, after Spain defeated England, 1-0, at the World Cup final in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 20.He offered a tepid apology the next day, but by the end of that week he had dug in his heels and reversed course, insisting that Ms. Hermoso had “moved me close to her body” during their encounter onstage, feet from the Spanish queen. He also accused his critics of targeting him in a “social assassination” and declared that he would not step down.Ms. Hermoso has vigorously disputed his account and has received support far and wide, with players and others — including the United Nations’ human rights office — using the hashtag “se acabó,” or “it’s over.”The Spanish government was limited in its ability to punish Mr. Rubiales, but Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the soccer chief’s actions as “unacceptable,” and the secretary of the opposition People’s Party, Cuca Gamarra, described them as “shameful.”The scandal has taken some of the shine off the national team’s World Cup triumph, diverting attention from the rapid ascent to soccer glory by a squad that qualified for the tournament for the first time eight years ago after decades of mediocrity.On Sunday evening, Mr. Rubiales gave an interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” in which he said he came to the decision to resign after speaking to friends and family. “They say to me, ‘Luis, now you have to focus on your dignity and to continue your life, because if not, probably, you are going to damage people you love,’” he said.Victor Francos, the president of Spain’s National Sports Council, said on Onda Cero radio that Mr. Rubiales’s resignation was “good news for the government” and “what the citizens were asking for.” Minutes earlier on Cadena Ser radio, he said the government was considering “legislative changes that can improve, strengthen and enrich public control over the federations.”“We must reflect so that certain things that have happened don’t happen again,” he said.But Mr. Rubiales was not without his supporters.When he spoke at a federation meeting in late August, his robust defense was met with loud applause by some in attendance, and his mother locked herself in a church and began a hunger strike to protest what she considered a witch hunt of her son.Before Mr. Rubiales was punished, the controversy led to the ouster of another high-profile figure in the world of Spanish women’s soccer: Jorge Vilda, the coach of the World Cup winning squad but a polarizing figure, who was fired on Tuesday.Mr. Vilda, who was hired in 2015 when his predecessor was ousted amid accusations of sexism, had been dogged by scandal in recent months. And last year, 15 star players refused to play on the national team, complaining about controlling behavior by Mr. Vilda and a general culture of sexism. More

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      A Shocking Soccer Kiss Demonstrates the Power of Scandal

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      By generating public outrage, scandals make inaction costly: suddenly, doing nothing carries greater risks.After Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s soccer federation, forcibly kissed Jennifer Hermoso, a player on the national women’s team, in the wake of their World Cup win, many wondered whether it would be a #MeToo moment for Spain.Whether the televised kiss galvanizes a lasting movement against harassment and discrimination is yet to be seen. But the growing backlash against Rubiales highlights an often-crucial element of such public reckonings: scandal. During periods of social change, there is often a phase of widespread support for an overhaul in principle but a reluctance within the population to actually make those ideals a reality. Changing a system means taking on the powerful insiders who benefit from it and bearing the brunt of their retaliation — a hard sell, particularly for those who do not expect the change to help them personally.A scandal can change that calculus profoundly, as illustrated by the furor surrounding the kiss. Hermoso described it as “an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act without any consent on my part.” (Rubiales, who has refused to resign, has forcefully defended his conduct and insisted that the kiss was consensual.)By generating public outrage, scandals make inaction costly: suddenly, doing nothing risks an even greater backlash. And scandals can alter the other side of the equation, too: the powerful have less ability to retaliate if their erstwhile allies abandon them in order to avoid being tainted by the scandal themselves. Action becomes less costly at the same time that inaction becomes more so.But although scandals can be a mighty tool, they are not available to everyone. Just as the growing backlash against Rubiales has shown the power of scandal, the events of the months leading up to it, in which many members of the Spanish women’s team tried without success to change a system they described as controlling and outdated, underline how difficult it can be to spark a scandal — and how that can leave ordinary people excluded from public sympathy or the ability to enact change.The unifying power of scandalTo see how this pattern plays out, it’s helpful to look at the influence of scandal in a very different context. Yanilda González, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, researches police reform in the Americas. In the 2010s, she set out to determine why, after Latin American dictatorships ended, democratic reforms often exempted police forces, leaving them as islands of authoritarianism.In her resulting 2020 book, “Authoritarian Police in Democracy,” she describes how police forces can be extremely powerful in political terms, sometimes using the threat of public disorder as leverage over policymakers who might seek to limit their power or threaten their privileges.Politicians were reluctant to incur the costs of pursuing reforms that might provoke a backlash from police. And public opinion was often divided: while some demanded greater protections from state violence, others worried that police reforms would empower criminals.But, González found, scandals could change that. Episodes of particularly egregious police misconduct could unite public opinion in demanding reform. Opposition politicians, seeing an opportunity to win votes from an angry public, would add to the chorus, and eventually the government would decide that change was the least costly option.The Harvey Weinstein scandal followed a similar pattern. For many years, Weinstein’s predatory behavior was an open secret in Hollywood. But then a Times article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, in which multiple women detailed the abuses they had suffered at his hands, generated a massive scandal. The public outrage at Weinstein’s behavior meant that the old Hollywood calculus, in which it was safer to keep quiet about the powerful producer’s abuses than to try to stop them, no longer applied. Weinstein’s former allies abandoned him.That generated pressure for change that went far beyond Weinstein. A slew of other #MeToo scandals exposed powerful men as abusers, harassers, and general sex pests. A national reckoning followed.‘The kiss’ shows scandal’s power — but also its limitationsLong before the televised kiss, many members of the Spanish women’s team had lodged protests against Rubiales and the Spanish football association’s leadership. Last year, 15 members of the team, frustrated by unequal pay and general sexism, sent identical letters accusing the team’s coach, Jorge Vilda, of using methods damaging to “their emotional state and their health,” and saying they would not play for the national team unless he was fired.Those 15 women were some of the team’s best players. They were organized. And they were willing to sacrifice a World Cup appearance to achieve change.But they were not yet “Queens of the World,” as one magazine cover proclaimed them last week, with a World Cup win that would put them on the front page of every newspaper in the country. And they didn’t yet have a scandal. No single event had generated sufficient public outrage to shift power from the football association to the players. The Spanish football association, including Rubiales, reacted with outrage to the letters, and vowed to not only protect Vilda’s job, but to keep the writers off the national team unless they “accept their mistake and apologize.” Though there is no precise formula, to capture public attention a scandal often needs to involve an exceptionally sympathetic victim, as well as shocking allegations of misconduct. Kate Manne, a philosophy professor at Cornell and the author of two books on structural misogyny, has written about how some people will instinctively align themselves with the status quo, sympathizing with powerful men accused of sexual violence or other wrongdoing rather than their victims — a tendency she calls “himpathy.” To overcome that instinct, she said, victims often have to be particularly compelling, such as the famous actresses who came forward about Weinstein’s abuses.Of course, most victims of harassment and assault are not famous actresses, or queens of the world. Manne noted that Tarana Burke, the activist who founded the #MeToo movement, spent years trying to bring attention to the abuse of less privileged women before high-profile scandals galvanized global attention. “She was trying to draw attention to the plight of the Black and brown girls who can be victimized in ways that don’t ever scandalize anyone,” Manne said. Public outrage has tended to be reserved for high-profile victims. But if norms shift more broadly against abuse and impunity, there can be positive change for ordinary people as well. Famous actresses may have focused public anger on Weinstein, but the #MeToo movement also brought attention to abuses of some less-famous workers, such as restaurant staff.Once the machinery of scandal does kick in, the consequences can be significant. As my Times colleagues Jason Horowitz and Rachel Chaundler report, many Spanish women saw Rubiales’ action as an example of a macho, sexist culture that allows men to subject them to aggression and violence without consequence.As public anger grew, politicians weighed in on behalf of the players. Late Friday night, the entire team and dozens of other players issued a joint statement saying that they would not play for Spain “if the current managers continue.” The next day, members of Vilda’s coaching staff resigned en masse.On Monday, Spanish prosecutors announced an investigation into whether Rubiales might have committed criminal sexual aggression. The same day, the Royal Spanish Football Association, which Rubiales currently leads, called on him to resign.The question now is not just whether he will be fired or step down, but if the broader outrage will lead to real change in Spain. “When we have these women who are, you know, figuratively and literally on top of the world in professional sports — and it’s captured live on video — then we have the makings of a scandal,” Manne said. It is too soon to tell where that might lead. More

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      Pressure Mounts on Rubiales Over Kiss at World Cup

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      Luis Rubiales has defied calls to resign, now echoed by his own federation. Soccer’s world governing body has suspended him, and prosecutors have opened an initial investigation.The pressure is on for Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s national soccer federation, to quit.Prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation on Monday into whether his kiss of the forward Jennifer Hermoso, during the medals ceremony after she and her teammates won the Women’s World Cup for Spain last week, was an act of sexual aggression.In an emergency meeting that went on late into Monday night, Spain’s regional soccer chiefs unanimously asked him to step down immediately. The president of the National Sports Council said in a televised news conference on Monday that Mr. Rubiales should have handed in his notice last Friday. And in Madrid on Monday night, hundreds of people took to the streets, waving red cards and demanding Mr. Rubiales’s resignation.But Mr. Rubiales has remained defiant. Since Friday — when he said “I will not resign” five times — he has been holed up with his family in his hometown, Motril.Mr. Rubiales, a former professional soccer player, had hoped to play a match with friends on Saturday evening at the town’s municipal stadium. Feminist groups threatened to protest outside the gates, and the town council ordered it canceled, saying it could not guarantee Mr. Rubiales’s safety.There are also some signs of backing for him in the town, however.Mr. Rubiales’s mother has been on hunger strike in a church in Motril since Monday, protesting against what she has called the “inhumane and bloody hunt” against her son. On Monday night, responding to a call by Mr. Rubiales’s cousins, people congregated outside the church in support, some with posters aimed at Ms. Hermoso saying: “Jenni, tell the truth.” A police estimate cited in the Spanish media put the crowd at around 200.On Monday, Spain’s public prosecutors opened a pretrial investigation to establish whether the nonconsensual kiss Mr. Rubiales pressed on Ms. Hermoso was an act of sexual aggression, a crime that is punishable by up to four years in prison. Ms. Hermoso was widely reported to have been given 15 days to come forward with a formal complaint that would allow the prosecutors to proceed.As a young man, Mr. Rubiales, 46, enjoyed a career as a soccer player in the Spanish league. He became president of the Spanish soccer players’ association in 2010 and then took over the presidency of the Royal Spanish Football Federation five years ago. On Tuesday morning, there was no news from Mr. Rubiales. If he refuses to go voluntarily, the federation he presides over may hold a vote of no confidence to oust him.The Spanish government, for the time being, has its hands tied. According to press reports, it can intervene only if the Court of Arbitration for Sport considers the kiss to be a “very serious infraction.” On Monday, the reports said, the court asked for more documentation before reaching a decision.In a news conference on Tuesday morning, the acting sports minister, Miquel Iceta, was questioned about what steps the government was taking to remove Mr. Rubiales. “We all want this matter to be resolved as soon as possible,” Mr. Iceta said. “But we must also ensure that it is done rigorously and with all the legal guarantees — among other reasons, to prevent an appeal that could reverse whatever decisions are made.” More

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      Marc Overmars, Dutch Soccer Star, Quits Post After Admitting to Inappropriate Texts

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      Marc Overmars, a former player who became a director at Ajax, one of Europe’s top clubs, apologized for his actions. The club said he had “gone over the line.”Marc Overmars, a former Dutch soccer star who became a top executive at one of Europe’s most prominent teams, has abruptly left his job after admitting to sending inappropriate text messages to female colleagues.Overmars, 48, had been director of football affairs at AFC Ajax, the Amsterdam soccer team, since 2012. He had recently renewed his contract until June 2026, according to Ajax, which announced the resignation late Sunday. Many details remained unclear, including whether charges had been filed against Overmars.Overmars apologized for his behavior in a statement issued by Ajax, in which he said he was “ashamed.”“Last week I was confronted with reports about my behavior. And how this has come across to others,” Overmars said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that I was crossing the line with this, but that was made clear to me in recent days.”“For someone in my position, this behavior is unacceptable. I now see that too. But it is too late. I see no other option but to leave Ajax,” he added.Overmars played as a winger for some of Europe’s top soccer teams, including Ajax, Arsenal and Barcelona, as well as the Dutch national team.Ajax is currently leading the Eredivisie, the highest level of professional soccer in the Netherlands, and is the defending national champion. The resignation comes as a sexual misconduct scandal dominates the news and has captured national attention in the Netherlands after allegations emerged of widespread sexual misconduct at a popular TV talent show. Experts have said that issues surrounding consent and sexual misconduct have long been ignored in the Netherlands.Leen Meijaard, the chairman of Ajax’s supervisory board, called Overmars “probably the best football director that Ajax has had.” But, he added, after consulting an expert and the team’s chief executive they concluded that it was not an option for him to continue in his role.“It is devastating for the women who have had to deal with this behavior. When we heard the news, we immediately acted,” Meijaard said. “Unfortunately, he has really gone over the line.”The soccer world has seen multiple harassment scandals recently. The head of a program run by FIFA, the world soccer governing body, to bring together luminaries of the game, FIFA Legends, was found to have sexually harassed a subordinate in 2019. In 2020, female soccer players, including some who played in Haiti’s national soccer program, accused senior soccer officials of coercing players into having sex.Edwin van der Sar, a former star goalkeeper who is currently Ajax’s chief executive and who played with Overmars at Ajax in the 1990s, called the situation “appalling” and said that the club would pay more attention to matters of misconduct in the near future.“A safe sport and working climate is very important,” van der Sar said. “We are working on something very wonderful here at Ajax, so this news will also be a blow to everyone who cares about Ajax.” More

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      Why Peng Shuai Frustrates China's Propaganda Machine

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      Accustomed to forcing messages on audiences at home and abroad, its propaganda machine hasn’t learned how to craft a narrative that stands up to scrutiny.The Chinese government has become extremely effective in controlling what the country’s 1.4 billion people think and talk about.But influencing the rest of the world is a different matter, as Peng Shuai has aptly demonstrated.Chinese state media and its journalists have offered one piece of evidence after another to prove the star Chinese tennis player was safe and sound despite her public accusation of sexual assault against a powerful former vice premier.One Beijing-controlled outlet claimed it obtained an email she wrote in which she denied the accusations. Another offered up a video of Ms. Peng at a dinner, in which she and her companions rather conspicuously discussed the date to prove that it was recorded this past weekend.The international outcry grew only louder. Instead of persuading the world, China’s ham-handed response has become a textbook example of its inability to communicate with an audience that it can’t control through censorship and coercion.The ruling Communist Party communicates through one-way, top-down messaging. It seems to have a hard time understanding that persuasive narratives must be backed by facts and verified by credible, independent sources. In its official comments, China’s foreign ministry has mostly dodged questions about Ms. Peng, claiming first to be unaware of the matter, then that the topic fell outside its purview. On Tuesday, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman, leaned on a familiar tactic: questioning the motives behind the coverage of Ms. Peng’s allegations. “I hope certain people will stop malicious hype, not to mention to politicize it,” he told reporters.China has grown more sophisticated in recent years at using the power of the internet to advance a more positive, less critical narrative — an effort that appears to work from time to time. But at its heart, China’s propaganda machine still believes the best way to make problems disappear is to shout down the other side. It can also threaten to close off access to its vast market and booming economy to silence companies and governments that don’t buy their line.“Messages like these are meant as a demonstration of power: ‘We are telling you that she is fine, and who are you to say otherwise?’” Mareike Ohlberg, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a Berlin research institute, wrote on Twitter. “It’s not meant to convince people but to intimidate and demonstrate the power of the state.”Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has tightened limits on relatively independent media outlets and critical online voices.Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChina has a history of less-than-believable testimonials. A jailed prominent lawyer denounced her son on state television for fleeing the country. A Hong Kong bookstore manager who was detained for selling books about the private lives of Chinese leaders said after his release that he had to make a dozen recorded confessions before his captors were satisfied.This time, the world of women’s tennis isn’t playing along and has suggested it will stop holding events in China until it is sure Ms. Peng is truly free of government control. The biggest names in tennis — Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic, among many others — don’t seem to be afraid to lose access to a potential market of 1.4 billion tennis fans either. The pushback is problematic because the Winter Olympics in Beijing are just weeks away from opening.The country’s huge army of propagandists has failed its top leader Xi Jinping’s expectations that it take control of the global narrative about China. But it shouldn’t take all the blame: The failure is ingrained in the controlling nature of China’s authoritarian system.“It can make Peng Shuai play any role, including putting up a show of being free,” Pin Ho, a New York-based media businessman, wrote on Twitter.For Chinese officials in charge of crisis management, he continued, such control is routine. “But for the free world,” he said, “this is even more frightening than forced confessions.”One of the biggest giveaways that Ms. Peng isn’t free to speak her mind is that her name remains censored on the Chinese internet.“As long as coverages about her inside and outside China are different, she’s not speaking freely,” said Rose Luqiu, an assistant professor of journalism at the Hong Kong Baptist University.Ms. Peng appeared in a live video call with the president of the International Olympic Committee and other officials within the organization. But women’s tennis officials still have their doubts.Greg Martin/IOC, Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesDespite the outpouring of concern about Ms. Peng’s well-being on Twitter and other online platforms that are blocked in China, the Chinese public has little knowledge of the discussions.Late Friday night, as the momentum of the hashtag #whereispengshuai was building on Twitter, I couldn’t find any discussion of the question on Chinese social media. Still, Ms. Peng had clearly caught the attention of politically observant Chinese. I messaged a friend in Beijing who was usually on top of hot topics and asked generally, in coded words, if she had heard about a huge campaign to find someone. “PS?” the friend guessed, using Ms. Peng’s initials.It’s hard to estimate how many Chinese people learned about Ms. Peng’s allegation, which she detailed in a post on Chinese social media earlier this month. Her post — which named Zhang Gaoli, a former top Communist Party leader, as her assailant — was deleted within minutes. One Weibo social media user asked in a comment whether saving a screenshot of Ms. Peng’s post was incriminating. Another Weibo user, in a comment, described being too scared to share the post.They have good reasons to be afraid. Beijing has made it easier to detain or charge people for what they say online. Many people get their social media accounts deleted for simply sharing content that the censors deemed inappropriate, including #MeToo-related content.Ms. Peng accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier and top Communist Party leader, of sexual assault in a social media post.How Hwee Young/European Pressphoto AgencyChina has been bitter about its poor image in the Western mainstream news media and has talked for years about taking control of the narrative. Mr. Xi, the top leader, said that he hoped the country would have the capacity to shape a global narrative that’s compatible with its rising status in the world. “Tell the China story well,” he instructed. “Create a credible, lovable and respectable image of China.”Official media has raised the suggestion that Covid-19 emerged from a lab in the United States and spread the unproven allegation on Facebook and Twitter. China released thousands of videos on YouTube and other Western platforms in which Uyghurs said they were “very free” and “very happy” while the Communist Party was carrying out repressive policies against them and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.In reality, China is less respected, and its narratives less credible, since Mr. Xi took power nine years ago. He cracked down on relatively independent media outlets and eliminated critical online voices within the country. He unleashed diplomats and nationalistic youth who would roar back any hint of criticism or belittlement.“There are three things that are inevitable in life: life, death and humiliating China,” a reader commented on a recent column of mine.Despite China’s relatively fast economic growth and relatively competent response to the pandemic, the country’s deteriorating human rights records and its uncompromising international stance are not helping its image. The negative views of China in the vast majority of the world’s advanced economies reached a historic high last year, according to Pew Research Center.China can’t respond to the questions about Ms. Peng effectively because it can’t even address the problem directly. The subject of Ms. Peng’s sexual assault allegation, Mr. Zhang, had been one of the Communist Party’s most powerful officials before he retired. The party sees criticism of a top leader as a direct attack on the whole organization, so it won’t repeat her allegation. As a result, the state media journalists who are trying to argue that Ms. Peng is fine can’t even refer to it directly.“I don’t believe Ms. Peng has received retaliation and repression speculated by foreign media for the thing people talked about,” Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times.Giulia Marchi for The New York TimesFor Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalist Global Times tabloid, the allegation against Mr. Zhang has become “the thing.” “I don’t believe Peng Shuai has received retaliation and repression speculated by foreign media for the thing people talked about,” he wrote on Twitter.Mr. Zhang can’t even be discussed online in China. Those who do call him “kimchi” because his given name sounds like the name of an ancient Korean dynasty.If Mr. Hu, China’s spin master, could speak more plainly, and if the Chinese people had the freedom to discuss Ms. Peng and her allegation, official media might understand how to build a narrative. Instead, Mr. Hu alternates between trying to change the conversation and trying to shut it down completely.“For those who truly care about safety of Peng Shuai, her appearances of these days are enough to relieve them or eliminate most of their worries,” he wrote. “But for those aiming to attack China’s system and boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics, facts, no matter how many, don’t work for them.” More

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      How Peng Shuai Went From ‘Chinese Princess’ to Silenced #MeToo Accuser

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      The tennis star won independence while remaining in Beijing’s good graces. But she has been unable to break through China’s resistance to sexual assault allegations.When Peng Shuai was a young tennis player in China’s national sports system, she battled officials for control over her own professional career — and she won.When she took on one of China’s most powerful men three weeks ago, accusing him of sexual assault, she found her voice silenced, erased from China’s heavily controlled cyberspace and smiling in awkward public appearances most likely intended to defuse what has become an international scandal.At 35, Ms. Peng is one of her country’s most recognized athletes, a doubles champion at Wimbledon and the French Open whom state media once hailed as “our Chinese princess.” If anyone were able to break through the country’s icy resistance to #MeToo allegations, it would seem to be someone like her.Instead, she has become another example of China’s iron grip over politics, society and sports, and an object lesson in the struggle facing women who dare to challenge Beijing — even those who have had a history of winning praise from the state.Her allegation was the first to penetrate the highest pinnacles of power in China, the Politburo Standing Committee. It was an act of courage and perhaps desperation that has resulted in an aggressive response, smothering her inside China.“Peng has always been a strong-minded person,” said Terry Rhoads, the managing director of Zou Sports, the talent management agency in Shanghai that represented her for a decade until 2014. “I witnessed up close her struggles and battles with people bossing her or having authority over her tennis.”A screen grab obtained from social media showing Ms. Peng at the opening ceremony of the Fila Kids Junior Tennis Challenger Final in Beijing on Sunday.Via Twitter @Qingqingparis/via ReutersOver the weekend, the state’s propaganda apparatus produced a series of photographs and videos purporting to show Ms. Peng carrying on as if nothing had happened.The only thing missing from the recent flurry of coverage was her own voice, one once strong enough to force the authorities to bend to her steely determination to control her own destiny.The images were in striking contrast to her own description three weeks ago of being like “a moth darting into the flames” in order to “tell the truth” about her relationship with — and mistreatment by — Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier, who she said assaulted her around three years ago.“The authorities have never liked feminists or #MeToo,” said Lijia Zhang, the author of “Lotus,” a novel depicting prostitution in China. Those who “dared to speak out,” she added, “have been silenced.”A #WhereisPengShuai campaign has taken root less than three months before Beijing is to host the Winter Olympics, an event that the country’s leadership has indicated would validate Communist Party rule. The handling of Ms. Peng’s accusation has only inflamed criticism, giving ammunition to those who have called for a boycott.“These photos and videos can only prove that Peng Shuai is alive, but nothing else. They cannot prove that Peng Shuai is free,” Teng Biao, one of China’s most prominent civil rights lawyers, said in a telephone call from his home in New Jersey.Ms. Peng spoke on Sunday with officials at the International Olympic Committee, which passed on a message from her saying “that she is safe and well” but that she “would like to have her privacy respected at this time.” That didn’t satisfy Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, which has been pressing for answers about Ms. Peng’s ability to move and speak freely. “It was good to see Peng Shuai in recent videos, but they don’t alleviate or address the WTA’s concern about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion,” the group said in a statement.Women in China have long struggled to have agency in the country, a situation that many activists say has worsened since Mr. Xi came to power nearly a decade ago.Ms. Peng returning a shot against Carla Suárez Navarro of Spain during their first-round tennis match at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.Toby Melville/ReutersMs. Peng carved out a professional tennis career that meant taking on officials who tried to dictate whom she could train with, what tournaments she could play in and how much money she could keep for herself.When it comes to an accusation of sexual misconduct, however, the state has proved to be more resistant to change. The moment Ms. Peng posted her #MeToo allegations, Mr. Teng said, “she was barely protected by the law, and it was all politics that determined her fate.”Born in the city of Xiangtan, where her father was a police officer, Ms. Peng was introduced to tennis by an uncle when she was 8. At 12, she required surgery to correct a congenital heart defect that left people doubting she could continue to play.“They thought I would leave tennis,” she said in an Adidas ad campaign in 2008, “but surprisingly, I didn’t give up. Maybe because I love tennis so much I decided to have this operation.”After the surgery, she was sent to Tianjin, where she was drafted into China’s Soviet-style sports machine, designed to churn out international competitors, especially in the Olympics. She ultimately competed in the Olympics three times, beginning with Beijing in 2008.By the mid-2000s, Ms. Peng decided she was no longer willing to give more than half of her earnings away to the state. She and three other Chinese players decided to break out of the state’s control, effectively by threatening to stop playing.When she made the decision in 2005 to “fly solo,” as it was called in Chinese, a sports official criticized her for being too selfish, abandoning her “mother country.”Ms. Peng in a match against Alicia Molik of Australia, at the Medibank Private International in January 2005 at Sydney Olympic Park.Chris McGrath/Getty Images“She thought she was Sharapova?” the official said, referring to the Russian player who was for a time the No. 1 player in women’s tennis.Even as she took on decades of sports tradition, Ms. Peng knew how to play to China’s desire to showcase its top athletes. The head coach of the Tianjin Tennis Team, where she had trained, took credit for having “created the foundation and conditions for Peng Shuai to fly solo.”Ms. Peng later won the doubles championship at Wimbledon in 2013 and again at the French Open in 2014. That year, playing singles, she reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open, peaking as the No. 14 player in the world. With her successes mounting, officials lauded her and other tennis champions, like Li Na, the “golden flowers” of Chinese sports.“She was very engaging, always smiling and giggling, but also a great competitor,” Patrick McEnroe, the former player and commentator, said in an interview.She could also be calculating. In 2018, she was suspended from the Women’s Tennis Association for offering a financial incentive to Alison Van Uytvanck to withdraw as her doubles partner after the deadline for signing up for Wimbledon in 2017. Ms. Van Uytvanck criticized her publicly then, but she has joined other tennis stars in calling for an investigation into the recent allegations.A number of women in media, at universities and in the private sector in China have come forward with accusations of sexual assault and harassment — only to face legal action themselves and harassment online.According to the message Ms. Peng posted on Nov. 2 on her verified account on Weibo, the ubiquitous social media platform in China, she first met Mr. Zhang when she was a rising star and he was a party secretary in Tianjin, the provincial-level port city near Beijing. That would have been some time before 2012. She moved to Tianjin to start professional training in 1999 when she was 13.Ms. Peng’s post described a conflicted relationship that alternated between playing chess and tennis with Mr. Zhang, or feeling ignored by him and ridiculed by his wife. She did not explicitly acknowledge the disparity in age and power between the two. “Romantic attraction is such a complicated thing,” she wrote.Mr. Zhang was elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee in 2012, becoming a vice premier under Mr. Xi. He stepped down after one five-year term on the committee. Ms. Peng said it was around that time that Mr. Zhang coerced her into having sex. “I was crying the entire time,” she wrote.Zhang Gaoli speaking during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing in 2017.Lintao Zhang/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Her post was censored within 34 minutes, but three weeks later, it continues to reverberate. Those who knew her from her professional tennis career continue to wonder if she is safe. Some human rights activists contend that she is being forced to take part in staged situations intended to deflect questions about what happened.In the flurry of coverage over the weekend, most of which did not appear in Chinese state media, Ms. Peng was shown posing with stuffed animals, dining in a Beijing restaurant, appearing at a youth tournament and dialing in to a video call with the head of the International Olympic Committee.“Can any girl fake such a sunny smile under pressure?” Hu Xijin, the editor of The Global Times, a state media tabloid, wrote on Twitter, which is banned in China.Ms. Peng no longer appears in control of her own messaging.“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more interviews with Peng Shuai,” Maria Repnikova, an assistant professor of political communication at Georgia State University and author of a new book, “Chinese Soft Power,” “but I doubt that she will raise any sensitive matters.”Reporting and research were contributed by More

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      China's Peng Shuai Makes #MeToo Claim Against Zhang Gaoli

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      Peng Shuai’s accusation against Zhang Gaoli takes the country’s budding #MeToo movement to the top echelons of the Communist Party for the first time.Peng Shuai, the professional tennis star, publicly accused a former vice premier of China of sexual assault, igniting an online firestorm of attention to a #MeToo allegation that for the first time touched the pinnacles of Communist Party power.Ms. Peng made the allegation in a post on Tuesday night on her verified account on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. In it, she described an assault that began an on-and-off consensual relationship with Zhang Gaoli, who from 2012 to 2017 served on the party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the top ruling body in China.The post was removed within minutes, but the allegations swirled through the country’s heavily controlled internet, fueled by the fame of the accuser and the accused. That kept the censors inside China’s Great Firewall scrambling.Searches of her name and even the word “tennis” appeared to be blocked, reflecting the extraordinary sensitivity within China of discussing misconduct by party leaders.“The impact of #MeToo has been accumulating for three years,” Lü Pin, an activist who founded the now-banned Chinese online forum Feminist Voices, said in a telephone interview from New Jersey, where she now lives. “When the first women began talking about their experiences three years ago, no one could have imagined that it would reach this high level.”Ms. Peng’s accusations could not be corroborated. In her post, she acknowledged that she would be unable to produce evidence of her accusation, suggesting at one point that Mr. Zhang had expressed worries that she might record their encounters.She could not be reached for comment. The State Council, China’s governing body, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The authorities have charged government officials with sexual misconduct before, often in conjunction with corruption investigations. Never before, though, has an accusation of sexual misconduct been leveled publicly against as senior a political leader as Mr. Zhang.“These allegations are not shocking in substance but are shocking in the target,” Bill Bishop, the founder of Sinocism, a newsletter on Chinese affairs, wrote.Zhang Gaoli, the former vice premier, in 2014. As a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, Mr. Zhang was once one of the most powerful people in the country.Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersAn economist by education, Mr. Zhang, now 75, rose through the ranks of the party and government. He served as governor of Shandong, the coastal province, and then as party secretary in Tianjin, the provincial-level port city on the Bohai Sea. As vice premier from 2013 to 2018, he was one of seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, headed then, as now, by China’s leader, Xi Jinping.“I know that for someone of your eminence, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, you’ve said that you’re not afraid,” Ms. Peng wrote in her post, “but even if it’s just me, like an egg hitting a rock, or a moth to the flame, courting self-destruction, I’ll tell the truth about you.”Women in media, at universities and in the private sector in China have all come forward with accusations of sexual assault and harassment — only to face pushback in the courts and censorship online.In China, many women say, there remains an ingrained patriarchal tradition of using positions in business or government to gain sexual favors from subordinates or other women. In 2016, the country’s top prosecuting agency listed the exchange of “power for sex recklessly” as one of six traits of senior officials accused of corruption.The accuser in another high-profile harassment case, Zhou Xiaoxuan, posted a note expressing sympathy for Ms. Peng, illustrating how widely the accusation became known despite the censorship. “I hope she’s safe and sound,” she wrote.Ms. Zhou, who in 2018 accused a prominent television anchor of sexual harassment four years earlier, emerged as a trailblazer of China’s fledgling #MeToo movement and also a victim of the social and legal challenges women who come forward face. In September, a court in Beijing ruled that she had “tendered insufficient evidence” to prove her case against the anchor, Zhu Jun, who has sued her for slander.Mr. Zhang retired in 2018, when, according to Ms. Peng’s account, the two resumed a relationship that had begun when he served in Tianjin, which would have been between 2007 and 2012. She said he had first assaulted her after inviting her to play tennis with him and his wife. “I never consented that afternoon, crying all the time,” she wrote, not specifying when exactly the assault occurred.At the time she was soaring through a professional career that would propel her to a No. 1 ranking in doubles with the Women’s Tennis Association in 2014 and as high as 14th as a singles player.With her partner, Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan, she won the doubles championship at Wimbledon in 2013 and again at the French Open in 2014. That year, playing singles, she reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open. She remains ranked 189th in singles and 248th in doubles, last playing at the Qatar Total Open in February 2020, according to the association.She was one of the athletes who broke out of the country’s sports system, which mandates that most train under state coaches and give most of their earnings, even from endorsements, back to the state. She was one of the first to reach an agreement to allow her to train and travel by herself and keep a larger share of the earnings.Her post continued to circulate in screen shots and other messages even after it was deleted, a testament to the resonance accusations like hers has in Chinese society.“The censorship is not working,” Ms. Lü, the activist, said. She added that while it was important that people were discussing the issue, “changing policy is the most difficult part.”Chris Buckley More

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      U.S. Soccer's Top Women's League Faces Down Abusers, Uncertainty

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      The players in the National Women’s Soccer League, tired of abuse and harassment, are speaking up and seizing power. But the way forward for the troubled league isn’t clear.In the top professional soccer league for women in North America, everyone understood that the power primarily rested with men: the team owners, executives and coaches who controlled the athletes and their careers.While the National Women’s Soccer League is home to celebrities like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan from the World Cup-winning U.S. national team, the backbone of the labor comes from unheralded players who earn meager wages and, until now, were reluctant to speak out and disrupt a league that is likely their only shot at playing professional sports in the United States.Yet a wave of allegations in recent months — that coaches sexually abused or harassed players as executives looked the other way — has highlighted a power dynamic that threatened the safety of women, allowing misconduct to go unchecked and abusers to find new jobs around the league.And while there has been a burst of outrage, and top leaders — again, mostly male — have promised reform, many players fear that the basic power imbalance will remain even as they continue to speak out in a way that evokes the #MeToo movement in Hollywood and other industries.“If this isn’t a shut-up-and-listen-to-these-players moment, I don’t really know what is,” Kaylyn Kyle, a former player for the Orlando Pride, said while providing commentary on the broadcast of a game Thursday. “Devastated, disgusted, but I’m not shocked, and that’s the problem. I mean, I played in this league where this was normalized. That’s not OK.”When several games were played on Wednesday night, players stopped their matches at the six-minute mark to stand together in silent protest. The sixth minute represented the six years it took for a coach accused of sexual harassment and sexual coercion to be ousted from the league.The fallout is widespread. At least four coaches have been fired, including one for allegedly coercing a player to have sex with him and sexually harassing other players, and another after allegations of verbal abuse, which included ridiculing players. The league’s commissioner, Lisa Baird, has resigned under pressure after the league mishandled the abuse case of a coach who left one team amid serious accusations of sexual misconduct, only to land with another team and be celebrated for leading that franchise to championships.Front office executives have been forced out. Games were postponed at the players’ insistence. At least five investigations have been promised and no one can be sure what they will reveal.“Right now, as we look across the soccer landscape, packed with painful stories of sexual abuse, emotional abuse and team mismanagement, we, along with our peers, are suffering,” players from the Washington Spirit said in a statement earlier this week. Their former coach, Richie Burke, was fired last month after players accused him of verbal harassment.A Lack of ConsensusFans at a match between the Portland Thorns and the Houston Dash in Portland on Wednesday.Soobum Im/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe path forward for the league remains muddled at best.While the N.W.S.L. will resume a full schedule this weekend, it has been nearly paralyzed by the abuse scandal, with a glaring lack of trust among the players, owners and the league, according to interviews with more than a dozen people directly involved. Everyone wants someone to blame, and there is little apparent consensus about how to fix the N.W.S.L. and its problems.“People think of athletes as superhuman beings, particularly professional athletes, when actually they are incredibly vulnerable,” said Mary V. Harvey, an Olympic gold medalist, World Cup winner and former goalkeeper on the U.S. women’s national team who is now the chief executive of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. “You don’t want to complain and be the reason the league folds. There’s a massive power imbalance, and when you have power imbalance, that’s where these human rights violations happen.”Teams and the players’ union have publicly detailed their demands. The union this week tweeted that it wanted a mandatory suspension of anyone in a position of power who was being investigated for abuse. It also asked for more transparency in the investigations and a say in who is hired as the next commissioner.It’s a moment of reckoning for a sport that bounded into America’s consciousness when Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and their teammates on the U.S. women’s national team won the 1999 World Cup in front of a Rose Bowl packed with about 90,000 fans.Val Ackerman, commissioner of the Big East Conference and the former president of the W.N.B.A., said sports organizations should pay close attention to what is unfolding in women’s soccer.She called the N.W.S.L. situation “a wake-up call for our business,” and said it should prompt every sports entity to re-evaluate its policies and infrastructure. Sports leaders need to be especially mindful of safeguarding their employees, she said, in light of the continued gender imbalance in sports, with men often coaching and running women’s teams.At the start of this season, only one of the N.W.S.L.’s 10 teams was coached by a woman, and a majority of the owners and investors were men.“What’s sobering is that we are looking at the 50th anniversary of Title IX next year and 50 years later, we are still fighting for the equitable treatment of female athletes and a safe, respectful competition environment for female athletes,” Ackerman said, referring to the federal law that mandates gender equity in federally funded educational institutions. “It makes you wonder how far we’ve really come on the basics.”The current professional league is hardly a picture of strength or equity. Few N.W.S.L. teams are profitable. The minimum player salary is about $20,000, while it is at least three times that in Major League Soccer, the men’s professional league in the United States.Investigations have been promised by U.S. Soccer, the governing body of soccer in the United States; FIFA, the global governing body of the sport; the N.W.S.L. and the players’ union.Those inquiries will seek to answer how coaches accused of abuse were hired and were allowed to remain in the league and change teams without repercussions.Nadia Nadim, an Afghan-Danish player on Racing Louisville FC, said in a tweet last month that players should be ready to spark an uprising and follow through with it to force change because the sport’s officials have failed miserably at their jobs.“This league can be great, as we have the best players in the world,” she wrote. “We just need to get the idiots out, gain power and make this league as great as it CAN be.”A ‘Very Well Respected’ CoachPaul Riley won two league championships as coach of the North Carolina Courage after he left the Portland Thorns amid allegations of misconduct.Anne M. Peterson/Associated PressPaul Riley, the coach at the center of the minute-long protests at matches this week, rose from a youth soccer coach to become one of the highest-profile coaches in the women’s game, winning two championships in the N.W.S.L., with the North Carolina Courage.In 2015, three years before winning his first championship, Riley left the Portland Thorns N.W.S.L. team. The Thorns now say he was fired for cause, though the club made no such announcement at the time. Riley showed up months later coaching another N.W.S.L. team, the Western New York Flash. When the Flash, which eventually moved to North Carolina, announced the hiring, an executive of the team praised Riley for being “very well respected around the globe.”Last week, in a report in The Athletic, two former players said Riley abused players at will and that they had reported it to team management and the league. Riley denied most of the allegations to The Athletic, and did not respond to messages seeking comment.Sinead Farrelly, who played for Riley with the Philadelphia Independence in 2011 and then again with the Portland Thorns in 2014 and 2015, said Riley used his power as her coach to coerce her to have sex with him. Meleana Shim, who also played for the Thorns, said that after a night of drinking Riley pressured her and Farrelly to kiss each other. If they did so, the team would not have to run sprints the next day. Other players have accused Riley of making inappropriate comments.In September 2015, Shim emailed the owner of the Thorns, Merritt Paulson, as well as other team executives, about the kissing incident. She also emailed Jeff Plush, then the commissioner of the N.W.S.L.The next week, the Thorns announced that Riley would not coach the team the next season, thanking him for his service and making no mention of any misbehavior. In a statement this week, Steve Malik, the owner of the Courage, wrote that upon hiring Riley, he “assured that he was in good standing.”Riley, who was fired from the Courage last week, is now under investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which oversees abuse in Olympic sports.After that firing, Baird, the commissioner of the N.W.S.L. and the former chief marketing officer of the United States Olympic Committee, resigned less than two years at the post. Under her leadership, the league implemented its first anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy. But her efforts to protect players were seen by many of them as insufficient and, at times, negligent.“The league must accept responsibility for a process that failed to protect its own players from this abuse,” Morgan said in a Twitter post.The ongoing investigations are likely to scrutinize several coaches who recently have been removed from their posts.Burke, the former Washington Spirit coach, stepped down in August for “health reasons” just before a Washington Post report detailed accusations that he verbally abused players and was racially insensitive. He remained in the team’s front office until a league inquiry prompted his firing. Burke did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Two other coaches — Christy Holly of Racing Louisville FC and Craig Harrington of the Utah Royals — also were ousted from their jobs in the last year amid whispers of toxic workplace cultures. Holly was fired in August “for cause,” as his team said, but it did not provide details. Holly did not return requests for comment.Harrington, who was fired by the Royals last year after being put on leave during an unspecified investigation, was soon hired to coach women’s soccer in Mexico. Harrington did not respond to an emailed request for comment.Yael Averbuch, a former N.W.S.L. player and the current interim general manager of Gotham FC, said abuse cases in the league existed and are ongoing partly because players don’t have a safe, confidential way to report abuse or harassment. So cases go unreported, or are reported but aren’t properly handled, she said, and players are afraid to make the accusations public because they want to keep their jobs.“As a player I don’t know if I ever had an H.R. department to go to,” Averbuch said. “These are small businesses, and this league was for a while very new.”Harvey, the former national team player, said firing abusive coaches just one step toward making the league a safer place. Abuse, to her dismay, is ingrained in the culture of women’s sports — and has been for as long as she can remember. A sea change is necessary, and that might take some time.“It starts with the culture,” she said. “If you have a culture that engenders respect toward women and women athletes, then things look entirely different.” More

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      Why Some Women Don’t Want Antonio Brown in the Super Bowl

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021Why the Chiefs Will WinTom Brady vs. Patrick MahomesA Super Bowl Trip Is Worth the Risk to Some Fans17 Recipes for Tiny TailgatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports of the TimesWhy Some Women Don’t Want Antonio Brown in the Super BowlThe Buccaneers receiver has been one of the most electrifying players in the N.F.L., but he is facing accusations of sexual assault and harassment.Antonio Brown of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has been one of the best receivers in the N.F.L., but has faced serious accusations of abuse against women.Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesFeb. 6, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ETGet over it.That was the message Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Antonio Brown tried to convey this past week.The past doesn’t matter, he seemed to say. With the Super Bowl upon us, the only concern should be about his ability to catch passes on Sunday.Brown’s preferred talking points were his love for quarterback Tom Brady, his team’s drive to beat the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs, and his comeback.That comeback did not involve an injury that eroded his electrifying talent on the field. Those skills have remained sufficiently intact for Brown, 32, to find a plush spot in the N.F.L., in spite of the history he did not want to discuss at a requisite pre-Super Bowl news conference.“I’d be doing a disservice if I talked about things that are not a focus of this game,” he said.Those things include withering verbal abuse aimed at the mother of three of his children and recorded on video. And an accusation of sexual harassment that was described in detail in a national magazine. And a looming lawsuit accusing him of rape, a claim that Brown has vociferously denied.Now, he is one win from a championship ring after off-the-field trouble sent his career into one of the most stunning tumbles experienced by a star athlete in recent memory.Tampa Bay gambled on him in a way that no other team dared, signing Brown to a one-year contract in October after he had been out of the game for a season and a half. The Buccaneers did not heed commentators who, looking at the pattern of trouble around Brown, said he needed time away from the league — possibly for good, but at least until his lawsuit was resolved.The team also chose to look past the #MeToo movement and its fundamental lesson: Women with stories of pain, and of powerlessness in their dealings with famous men, should be heard and taken seriously.Let’s remember that one in four women are subjected to abuse by intimate partners during their lifetimes, according to a government report. Let’s think of what they endure every time they see athletes like Brown, with unresolved accusations around them, take the field.Let’s listen to Brenda Tracy, who describes herself as the survivor of a 1998 gang rape by a group of men that included two Oregon State football players. The players weren’t criminally charged, but they were suspended by the coach for making “a bad choice.” Tracy became an advocate for abused women, working toward change by sharing her story with anyone who will listen. Colleges across the country have hired her to speak to their athletic teams.“I won’t be watching the Super Bowl this year,” she told me. “With Antonio Brown out there, it’s just too much.”Ahead of the big game, Brown characterized himself as a changed man — humbled, grateful, and in control. He spoke in quiet, careful tones. He gave the sense that he sees the accusations as a chance to prove that he can conquer adversity, mostly by catching Brady’s passes.“I want my legacy to be a guy that was persistent, a guy that never gave up, no matter the odds, no matter the hate,” Brown said.Tom Brady said recently that he and Brown had “connected right away” as Patriots teammates. Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressWhat he really wanted was to move on.Let’s not. Let’s look at the claims, made by a personal trainer named Britney Taylor, in the lawsuit.In court filings, Taylor said that Brown assaulted her twice in 2017. She also asserted that Brown raped her in 2018.Through his legal team, the wide receiver has denied the accusations. He has countersued, accusing Taylor of defamation. Brown and Taylor were involved in a “consensual personal relationship,” his lawyer said in a statement.It is important to remember that the court proceedings can still be avoided if the two parties reach a settlement. It is not a criminal trial, in which Brown would face the possibility of prison.But Britney Taylor isn’t alone.In a Sports Illustrated article, an artist made detailed accusations of sexual harassment by Brown. The wide receiver also once targeted the mother of three of his children with a profane tirade and then posted a video of the incident on social media.On Twitter in 2018, he threatened a reporter from ESPN’s The Undefeated who wrote an article about Brown’s thorny personal life and turbocharged social media use. Brown ended up apologizing through a statement: “It is not OK to threaten anyone, and I need to be better spiritually and professionally.”That year he also settled a lawsuit that accused him of throwing heavy furniture from his 14th-floor apartment and nearly hitting a toddler.Brown’s exasperating behavior as a teammate prompted the Pittsburgh Steelers to trade him to the Oakland Raiders in 2019. Just before the start of the season, the Raiders dumped him for similar reasons.He landed briefly in New England, early in Brady’s final season with the Patriots. The lawsuit accusing Brown of rape soon became public, followed by the artist’s accusations of harassment. His third employer of that year cut him loose.Brady, who said recently that he and Brown had “connected right away” in New England, endorsed Tampa Bay’s decision to bring the receiver aboard midway through this season. When Brown arrived in town, he initially lived in Brady’s home.Yet Brown and the Buccaneers seem like an odd pairing. The team has two full-time female coaches, and there were only eight in the entire league this season. The Women’s Sports Foundation has honored Coach Bruce Arians for supporting women in the N.F.L.But Arians proved that talent matters more than principle.Sadly, that’s too often the bottom line for male stars in major sports. If you are accused of abusing or harassing women and are easy to replace, your job is probably gone. It doesn’t take a conviction, trial or arrest. (See Jared Porter, the former New York Mets general manager who was fired after accusations that he had repeatedly sent inappropriate texts to a female reporter.)If you are a star, well, your entitlement is virtually unlimited.Brown signed with the Buccaneers just after completing an eight-game suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. The reason for that penalty? He had pleaded no contest to burglary and assault charges after a dispute with a truck driver.He had every opportunity to express remorse for that incident this past week. He did not. So again, let’s listen instead to women, to people who won’t be in front of a huge global audience this weekend.Mindy Murphy runs The Spring of Tampa Bay, the largest shelter serving domestic violence survivors in Hillsborough County, home to the Buccaneers.When the N.F.L. tried to change its culture a few years ago, after Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was caught striking his fiancée, Murphy helped conduct training with the Buccaneers on abuse.Now she feels disillusioned.Seeing Brown chase a Super Bowl ring is a “disservice to what survivors have experienced,” she said. “When a team in the N.F.L. says, ‘We are going to hire him, and he deserves a second chance,’ or they say, ‘We don’t know for sure what’s happened, because it happened behind closed doors,’ they reinforce the idea that it’s not a good idea to speak up.”Remember that while watching the Buccaneers in the Super Bowl, and also remember Brown’s past.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More