Re: UNH Wildcats 2014/2015 - Wait 'Til Next Year!!!
Good for him. You ask the question "If you were advising him on strategy, what would you suggest?" I'm pretty sure one of my suggestions would NOT have been to issue a whining, self-serving press release that blames everyone else (including the press, ironically) except himself. He was/is being given a chance to return to school, AND stay out of jail. Guess that wasn't good enough, now he wants to air "his side of the story" (guess what - no one cares anymore) and whine - oops - *inform* us about all of the "immeasurable damage" all these bad people have conspired to cause him.
Last week I'm reading "Letters to the Editor" about Victim #2 giving of his free time to tutor a young goalie (admirable, but in retrospect it's fair to ask whether perhaps that was another part of the *strategy* from his legal team??) and now he HAS to share "my side of the story" (again, no one cares anymore), all the while dragging a former teammate into the mire with him.
No wonder his teammates chose his back-up as an Alternate Captain last year, and didn't give him the same honor in advance of this season, when he was without question the most high-profile returning senior in the Men's Hockey program.
If there is a lawsuit, there will be public record of same. And if you think a lawyer's letter looking to shake down the media, the local authorities and/or the ex-girlfriend won't hit the media within 24 hours of arrival at their intended target(s), then you are being very naive.
I will say this though, Darius ... your defense of the subject is the most reasoned of the two I've seen this afternoon.
I’m amazed at the negative responses here to the statement issued by Casey DeSmith and his parents. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion (preferably an informed one), but the lack of respect and basic decency is just mind-boggling. I never imagined that any self-professed Wildcats fan could be so cynical and venomous -- or discuss such a serious situation in such a flippant way. He's not a paid professional, people. He's a 23 year-old kid who's had to fight a battle the likes of which I hope none of you (or your 23 year-old children) ever have to fight.
Put yourself in Casey DeSmith’s shoes for a minute. You spend your whole life from the time you’re 10 years old working to become an elite goalie. You make the mistake of having too many drinks one night, and the next thing you know your name is being splashed all over the newspapers, you’ve been suspended from school, suspended from the team, and you’re being accused of a violent crime.
I know Casey DeSmith -- and have personally read the police reports that describe what happened the night he was arrested. His ex found him drunk and dragged him out of a house -- without any shoes or shirt on. Think a guy could get away with doing that to a girl? Then when he couldn’t walk and kept falling, she jumped on top of him and screamed at him. Willows is mentioned because he was involved. He was at the house, and told the girl to leave Casey there to sleep it off. But she didn't. Willows also made a key statement at DeSmith’s school hearing. He testified that the girl told him on the phone the next day that DeSmith had actually NOT hit her. And yet, she called the cops and told them that he had -- and the world believed her, because nothing sells papers better than a juicy little fairy tale about a coed in distress and a good athlete gone bad.
If I were in Casey DeSmith’s shoes, I’d be ****ed off at a lot of people, too. And I would sure as hell look for opportunities to try to clear my name, probably in language that’s much angrier than what he’s used.
The media couldn’t wait to report that he’d been arrested and suspended and kicked off the team. But how many of them ever bothered to look into what really happened? ZERO. He’s got every right to be ****ed off. People everywhere (including people on this board) just assumed that he must be guilty of everything that was reported. An ex-girlfriend (who admitted to police that she was “tipsy” that night) would never lie about such a thing, would she? Oh no…
We’re starting to see a very different picture than what’s been reported about this incident before, and I’m glad that some of the actual facts are starting to come out. If you knew what I know, you'd be marching outside the Whitt with picket signs demanding justice for Casey DeSmith. Yeah, he went out and got wasted on a Saturday night – but he’s not the first UNH hockey player who ever did that, and despite Coach Umile's laughable quote about "higher standards" he certainly won’t be the last. The difference is, in this case there was an ex-girlfriend around who decided it might be fun to single-handedly put a bullet in his future. And if you don’t think losing your starting position on a D-1 hockey team and losing an entire semester of your senior year is damaging -- not to mention the impact that the mere presence of such an accusation all over the internet could have on a young man's future career(s) -- you might want to consider going back to college for a few extra semesters yourself.
Do you REALLY believe Casey would have been allowed to return to the school, or that nothing more than some community service would result from the laundry list of trumped-up criminal charges, if he’d actually been guilty of assaulting that woman and everything else the initial news reports said he was “allegedly” guilty of? Fat chance. If there'd been the smallest kernel of truth in it the school would have expelled him (earning huge Title IX points with the Feds), while the criminal justice system and the media would have fallen all over themselves to put his head on a pole and make an example out of him. But they didn't -- because even they couldn't ignore the real truth when it became known. Now that it’s all over and he’s allowed to talk about it, he’s come out and said he was not guilty. And obviously, the authorities whose business it was to examine all the facts of the matter came to the same conclusion.
But some in the media, the same ones who hid behind the word “allegedly” as they tossed one Molotov cocktail after another at him over the past 3 months, apparently remain hell-bent on drawing more blood. Did you see the article in the Foster’s paper about his day in court -- the one that triggered this statement from Casey and his parents? It got just about every single fact concerning the outcome of his court hearing wrong. Worse than that, the writer of that article clearly tried to make it look like Casey was guilty of everything he’d been charged with, and to imply that somehow he just managed to get off easy. She wrote that he pleaded guilty to assault, which he absolutely did not – he pleaded NOT guilty to assault. She wrote that he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. That was also dead wrong. She wrote that he accepted a plea bargain to avoid jail time, which was totally false again. About the only thing she got right was his name. Tell me you wouldn’t be a little ****ed off if the media was THAT determined to spread lies about YOU (or your son or daughter) – and tell me you wouldn’t want to do something to try to clear YOUR name.
This kid played his tail off for UNH. He was the team MVP. The way the school and the media judged him guilty until proven innocent, the way the coach and athletic department turned their backs on him, and the way some fans on this site and elsewhere have thrown (and are still throwing) grenades at him makes me sick. Casey DeSmith got hosed by this woman, and by the school, and by the media, and by the entire "judge-first-ask-questions-later-if-ever" process that our society, as evidenced right here on this board, has lowered itself to. And in my opinion, anybody who doesn’t have sympathy for a young person caught up in such no-win circumstances should take a long, hard look in their own mirror.
I hope he sues the girl and the school and the newspapers and anybody else who said or printed lies about him. Contrition? Let THEM show some contrition for what THEY did to HIM -- right after they hand him a big settlement check.