Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • 52

r- i( DETROIT FREE PRESS WWW.FREEP.COKT SPORTS 4E TUESDAY, DEC. 21, 2004 ROSENBERG I The sad stoiy of Perez and his accusers Dodgers organization that a woman da MORE CASE STUDIES Oftentimes it seems hardly a j1 It week goe9 by without a pro- fesslonal or college athlete being accused of sexual as- sault. A look at a few sample high-profile cases: V'r a Getty Images Kobe Bryant, center, listens to the judge in an Eagle, courtroom. Kobe Bryant In July 2003, Bryant, a guard for the Lakers, was accused of assaulting a 19-year-old hotel worker near Vail, Colo. The case was dismissed in August 2004.

4m From Page IE neys disparage the accuser, saying the allegations are false. Sometimes the allegations are indeed false. We decide, almost instantly, whom we believe. Teammates and many fans defend the player, pointing out that consensual sex is readily available for pro athletes, so why would an athlete rape somebody? We don't give much thought to the counterargument: because sex is so readily available, some athletes feel entitled to it, regardless of the woman's wishes. The woman only has her story.

The police might believe her, as they did in all three cases with Carlos Perez. But oftentimes, that is not enough for a conviction or even a trial. And then the player, media and culture move along to the next sunburst, often leaving the alleged victim behind. "I wanted to just crawl under a bed and hide," said Amy McQuillin, one of Perez's alleged victims. "My father really wanted me to report it immediately.

I had people that I knew, that I had worked with in the media. It was just an absolute nightmare, the thought of it. "You can't imagine someone is out there doing this on a regular basis and they're getting away with it continually. I really feel it's a systemic problem." In the case of Carlos Perez, the women's accusations are similar, and their stories follow a familiar downward spiral. The first time Perez was accused was in 1995, when he was an All-Star pitcher with the Montreal Expos.

He was arrested on a road trip to Atlanta. The case remained open for al 3 1 1 GREG SORBERAseocisted 'raw rt Katie Hnida, at New Mexico, became the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I game. University of Colorado: In January, it was revealed that the football program had faced several allegations of rape, including Incidents at parties for recruits. In a deposition, the Boulder County district attorney was quoted as saying the school did not take the allegations seriously. The accusers included former Buffaloes kicker Katie Hnida.

Charges were not filed. PAUL CHIASSON Associated Press As a rookie in 1995, Carlos Perez was a first-half sensation, leading the National League in ERA and building a 10-3 record. But he finished the year with a weekend in a jail, a rape charge and a 10-8 mark. said Perez had raped her. Somebody alerted Major League Baseball's security team, which then contacted the Vero Beach police.

Vero Beach detective Keith Touch-berry called the alleged victim. The woman could not be reached by the Free Press. But according to police department transcripts, this is what she told Touchberry: She had been living temporarily with a friend, Dodgers pitcher Pedro Borbon, and fellow pitcher Carlos PereZ. She said Perez had made numerous advances, which made her uncomfortable. 1 "I was afraid Carlos was gonna do something to me," she told Touchberry.

"Pedro said he wouldn't, because him and Pedro were such good friends so when Carlos kept harassing me the next two days I thought I would get it on tape and let Pedro see for himself, 'cause he doesn't believe anything." The woman told Touchberry that she hid a tape recorder in her bag. On March 3L 1999, as she did laundry in the home where Perez and Borbon lived, Perez arrived home and came on to her. She then went into the kitchen. Her bag, and the tape recorder, remained in the laundry room. "That's when he took my car keys from me and that's when he took me into his bedroom," she told Touchberry.

"I said I didn't need my keys, that I could walk, and he said that I could not go anywhere and he'd kill me there, and that's about where it just got out of control." The phone rang. Perez answered. It was somebody who was supposed to meet him. He told the caller to wait an hour. "I think we were in the kitchen discussing this for like, probably 10-15 minutes," the woman said.

"I was like, 'Carlos, you don't wanna do this. You know, this is He kept saying that he wanted to have sex with me. "I was backed up against the counter and he had a hand on either side of me, so, I mean, there was no way that he was gonna let me anywhere. He picked me up and took me into the bedroom, carried me in there against my will. I was like, hanging onto the door jam as he was carrying me from the kitchen into the bedroom.

"It was absolutely foolish of me to think that there, you know, to even attempt, but I did make some attempt. I was crying and saying, 'Please don't do this, no, no and he, uh, pushed up, well. I don't wanna give details over the telephone. "From there he proceeded to perform sexual acts against my will. Put it that way." The woman told Touchberry she did not want to press charges.

She had been molested before, when she was a patient at a hospital and a hospital employee attacked her. The man went to jail for that attack, but she did not want to go through another court ordeal. "I'm not committing that I want that kind of nightmare in my life again," she told Touchberry during one of their phone conversations. Touchberry said he understood. But the woman also had a request.

"Will you do me a favor?" she asked. "Will you try and find that Amy McQuillin girl?" Another inquiry in Florida The cops soon tracked down Amy McQuillin. The other woman had heard that Perez had raped McQuillin. McQuillin told police she had not gone to them because she was worried nobody would believe her. She says now that she was fearful of the media coverage that would accompany an accusation; in the early 1990s, she was a public relations assistant for Major League Baseball and saw how alleged victims were perceived.

She knew how she had reacted. "I was on the other side of the fence," McQuillin said. "If somebody had said something like this to me years ago, I would have said, 'They're after his I was the last person I thought this would happen to." Police pressed for her help. After initial reservations, she told them her story: On the night of March 24, 1999. RANDY TOBIASKRT Despite his arrest, Ell Roberson played in the Fiesta Bowl for K-State.

Ell Roberson: On Jan. 1 of this year, the Kansas State quarterback was arrested on sexual-assault charges for an incident that took place the previous night. He was al- lowed to play in the Fiesta Bowl, his final collegiate game, and then was stripped of his scholarship.1 most five years. Finally, in June 2000, the district attorney in Fulton County, dropped the case at the victim's request, said district attorney spokesman Erik Friedly. But the accuser, Mandy Bernard, told the Free Press that she never asked for the case to be dropped.

By all accounts, Bernard made it clear at the beginning that she wanted to press charges, and she assumed it would go to trial. For a year, she felt like she was trying to keep in contact with the police more than they were trying to keep in contact with her. When the D.A. finally approached her, she had given up on the case. She didn't even respond.

"If they had come to me a month after, or even six months after, I would have gone after it," Bernard said. "For those four years, I was just kind of left wondering, wonder what In 1999, Perez was investigated for two alleged rapes in Vero Beach, Fla. One of the women asked police to drop the investigation because she did not want to go through a grueling legal process. In the other case, the state attorney believed the alleged victim, McQuillin, but decided the chances of a conviction were too slim to merit a trial. The Free Press generally does not publish the names of possible sexual-assault victims without their consent; Bernard and McQuillin agreed to have their names used.

McQuillin has a civil suit pending against Perez. In a deposition for that suit, he said he had consensual sex with Bernard and did not have sex with McQuillin or the other Florida woman at all. Regardless of the outcome of the civil suit, the criminal-justice system has run its course. In the eyes of the law, Carlos Perez is, was and will remain an innocent man. But soon, other athletes will be accused of similar crimes.

And in an instant, we will react to the sunburst. All of us. "What goes through my mind?" Bernard said. "'That poor Honestly, that's what goes through my mind. I don't know what's worse: the actual incident that happens or the media and what happens afterward.

"It's more so what happens afterward that I feel sorry for." An incident in Atlanta On the morning of Sept. 23, 1995, Atlanta police detective CA Povi-laitis arrived at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis to investigate a suspected sexual assault. He recently described the case as "very strong." The suspect: Montreal Expos Ail-Star pitcher Carlos Perez. The suspected victim: 20-year-old Atlanta resident Mandy Bernard. The allegation: Perez forced Ber-nard to have vaginal, oral and anal sex.

The evidence on the police report: bruises throughout her body, her panty hose in his room. Police took more than 90 photos of Ber- Groove nightclub in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. They danced, and he bought her a drink. He asked for her phone number; she agreed to give it to him. He pulled out a "Do Not Disturb" doorknob sign for her to write on, which she thought was "odd." She wrote her phone number on it.

She was supposed to meet several friends outside the club at closing time, but they didn't show. Perez offered to get her a cab. Bernard said OK. When he hailed one, she got in, and to her surprise, he joined her. She told the driver where she lived.

Perez leaned forward and whispered something to the driver. The driver drove toward the Marriott, in the opposite direction of her house. Bernard protested; she was a single mother and had to go home to her 3-month-old son. Perez said he wanted to go back to his hotel room to give her something because they wouldn't see each other again for a while. She did not want to go.

As they argued, the driver kept going to the hotel. Perez held her arm firmly as they walked toward the elevator. "I started getting a little concerned about the situation," Bernard said, "but not to where I could ever in my wildest dreams imagine that what was about to happen would When they got to his room, he walked over to a radio and turned it on. He started taking off his clothes. She immediately tried to leave, but he grabbed her and threw her on his bed.

He then forced her to have vaginal, oral and anal sex. "I was like, 'Get off me! Bernard said. "I was trying to push him away. That's when' I started yelling and crying. "He put a pillow over my head.

At that point, I really was just fearful for my life. I couldn't breathe. He was putting his hand over my mouth and on top of that had a pillow over my head. I just kind of gave up. The more I was fighting back, the worse and worse it was getting.

I just kind of gave in." Bernard said that when Perez finished the assault, he went into the bathroom for a quick shower. Bernard, crying and shocked, reached for the phone and called her friends. He came out of the bathroom and pushed her out of the room. Friedly, the district attorney's spokesman, said the case file was missing. The Free Press obtained a copy of the police report through Bernard, who had requested a copy.

When Perez was deposed for McQuillin's civil trial, he told his version of the story, jn English and in his native Spanish through an interpreter. As with Bernard's version, it starts with dancing and drinks at the Tongue and Groove. 'Listen, I'm he recalled telling Bernard. 'I don't know if you want to hang out for a She said, 'No problem, let's We went together. So we take a taxi, and the taxi try to drop me in the back door from the hotel.

"I said, 'No, no, no. Let's go. Let's drop you in the front and just walk I walk first, she walking right behind me. I never grab her hands. "And nothing, we have sex.

And then she first she told me going to stay. She leave in the morning. 1 And at two, three hours later in the morning she leave, people knock on my door like crazy. I was thinking (it was) one of my teammates, we going to go shopping, buying shoes and stuff." Instead, it was the cops. "They arrested me, you know," Perez said.

"I was in jail for I think it was two days. And then that was so funny. And then they find out she was lying and everything. I feel bad that was myself." He also said, "It was knocked down, they got rid of it because it was all a lie." Not so, according to the district attorney. Povilaitis, the detective on the scene, said he thought the case would be prosecuted.

"I believe that it was very strong," Povilaitis said. "Her statements never contradicted any other statement she had given me. There were definite signs of bruising and a struggle. We did take photos. There was an article of her clothing in a trash can in his room." Two days after the arrest, Bernard testified at a preliminary hearing.

She recounted the day of her testimony: To her left were a slew of news cameras. To her right was Carlos Perez, a man she said had raped her less than 72 hours earlier. In front of her was Perez's attorney, Guy Davis, peppering her with questions. Afterward, Expos general manager Kevin Malone defended Perez. "Everybody knows he's free-spirited," Malone told reporters, "but nobody would say he's mean or belligerent.

Nobody can believe he would do that." Perez was released on $50,000 bond. Davis told the media Perez was being set up, possibly for money. In a recent interview, he said he thought that was Bernard's motive all along, even though she never filed a civil suit. And he said the sex was obviously consensual. Otherwise, why would she write phone number on the "Do Not Disturb" sign in his room? If Bernard requested an end to the case, it was news to him, Davis said.

As far as he was concerned, the investigation was dropped because the case was weak. "All of her story was incredible," he said. "I don't know what got the woman angry, or if she had lawsuits in mind from the beginning. Her story just didn't check out." What about the photographs of her bruises? "I don't recall that," Davis said. "Even if there was, the lovemaking might have got a little rough.

Who knows?" Bernard said she spent years wondering when the case would de- velop. "I waited, waited, waited, waited, didn't hear anything," she said. "My family is all freaking out. I talked to Povilaitis several times over the next few months." Povilaitis moved to the homicide division (and eventually to the Chatham County, police department): Bernard said she called the police numerous times and was "given the run-around." She finally decided to move on. She admits that as she looks back on it, she wished she had been more aggressive.

"I didn't want the charges dropped," Bernard said. "I have to be honest and say I wasn't actively pursuing it, either." Years after the incident apparently in the late spring of 2000 Bernard said she got a call from her father, Jim. Two men had shown up at his door and told him they needed an answer from Mandy Bernard. Bernard did not call the district attorney. She did not want to relive an incident from almost five years earlier.

Her son, 3 months old at the time of the incident, was now entering kindergarten. She was no longer determined to seek a trial. Why did it take almost five years to reach a conclusion to the case? On Feb. 2, 1996, the Montreal Gazette quoted assistant district attorney Charles Hadaway as saying he was "looking toward having something one way or another" by Feb. 16, 1996.

On April 14, 1997, the Denver Post reported that the district attorney still had not made a decision. Almost 19 months had passed since Perez's arrest. "The only time I've ever had to wait that long was when I knew the suspect was out of the country and I couldn't get my hands on them," Povilaitis said. Perez did not pitch for Montreal in 1996 because of shoulder trouble, but from 1997 to 2000, he pitched for the Expos and Los Angeles Dodgers. The district attorney could have gone to Perez whenever he was in the United States if he wanted.

There was no need to go far. From 1997 until the case was dismissed, Perez's teams played 25 games in Atlanta. What happened? "My strong suspicion is that this case was one of the literally thousands of cases that were part of the backlog that this administration inherited," when it took office in 1997, Friedly said. "It took us a long time to really catch up and move forward. We had to clear out roughly 14,000 old cases." An accusation in Florida Spring training, 1999.

The Fulton County district attorney was supposedly in its fourth year of deciding whether to press charges against Carlos Perez. The police in Vero Beach, the spring training home of the Dodgers, were about to conduct their own investigations. Word had filtered through the Prttu I KEITH SRAKOClCAssooiated Quarterback Marcus Vick, brother of Michael, was -suspended for all of 2004. Virginia Tech: In February, three football players, In- eluding starting quarterback Marcus Vick, were charged with a total of 1 0 misdemeartr ors for giving three 1 5-year- old girls alcohol, taking pic- tures of them and having sex with at least one of them. The players were suspended from the team.

Notre Dame: In 2002, four football players were accused of rape. They were expelled from school. Charges were not I I i iilrniiiin i mi I McQuillin was introduced to Perez through a mutual friend, former major leaguer Gilberto Reyes. They spent an hour or more talking at her family's vacation home in Vero Beach. Her parents were there.

Perez was going to take Reyes home in his Mercedes. He offered to take McQuillin for a ride. "We were going to drive around the block, drop Gil off and bring me to my parents' house," McQuillin said. "He didn't do that. He brought me to his house." He said he needed to change his clothes.

She waited in the living room. He called her into the bedroom. He began to kiss her, then said, "I'm going to own you," and pushed her back onto the bed. Please see ROSENBERG, Page 6E nara. sne weni 10 a nospuai, wnere CHUCK ROBINSONAstoclsted Pre A rape conviction sent to jail former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson, right Mike Tyson: In 1 992.

he was convicted of raping beauty contestant Desiree Washington at his Indiana hotel room. physical evidence was taken. In an interview with the Free Press, Bernard repeated the story she told Povilaitis that night: She had met Perez through a mutual friend at the Tongue and.