Ben Roethlisberger in the Court of Public Opinion

I have seen the statements from the 572-page report issued by the Milledgeville Police Department. As the Chief Justice and member of good standing of the Court of Public Opinion, I can only render one verdict:

You are a rapist.

Let's be clear. This isn't a court of law, therefore I don't owe you any of the protections therein. I am free to look at the evidence that has been presented, without argument from prosecution or defense, and make a plain judgment of the facts.

You don't get reasonable doubt with me, since I can't put you in jail.

However, I can call it like I see it, and what I see is rape.

What most of us will see is rape.

This is far worse than anything Tiger Woods sexted to a porn star, mostly because she'd already been paid to do much of the same on film, and mainly because their affair was consensual. Hell, all of Woods' affairs were consensual.

Woods didn't trap anyone in a bathroom and rape them while off-duty police officers kept concerned friends away.

From here, it looked like Woods' biggest problem was saying "no." You, however, don't seem to be affected by that word very much.

In fact, from here it looks like the only reason you won't do a perp walk is because the victim was too inebriated to properly recall the events in question. From here, there's only enough evidence to show that something untoward happened, but not enough evidence to get you a cot at the Graybar Hotel. This would be the kind of "reasonable doubt" that your lawyers would have injected into the eventual witch-hunt that the trial would have become, had the state's attorney not had the grace to withdraw.

That's right, he had grace. Had he taken this to court, it is beyond all doubt that your attorneys would have pilloried this young lady's character publicly. Unlike you, the state's attorney had some compassion on the young lady. Staring at a case that he knew he couldn't win, he spared her the humiliation of having her entire sexual history paraded before the world.

Ironically, she'd be made to look worse than Veronica Siwik-Daniels (formerly known as porn star Joslyn James) who managed to come out of her affair with Tiger Woods looking sympathetic. In your victim's case, there isn't any video proclaiming her proclivities to the public, only your word against hers that she wanted to be trapped in a public restroom by a man twice her size and raped. Her character would have been impugned, at the very least.

Rest assured, I have no doubts whatsoever about your character.

I don't know or care what either the commissioner or the Steelers do to you after this. I know that you will be spared indignities that your victim wasn't spared. I know that whatever discipline they mete out to you will not be what you deserve.

What you deserve is to be locked away in a Georgia state correctional facility with other men who have raped. It doesn't require much in the way of imagination to see the possible irony of you being trapped in a restroom, making meaningless promises and threats, with no hope of escape and only pain and humiliation before you.

However, since I can't find you guilty of rape in a court of law, I can find you guilty of being a raping, gutless punk in the Court of Public Opinion.

Sincerely,

Van Walker

Chief Justice, Court of Public Opinion

sources: The Smoking Gun
Yahoo! Sports