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Transcript of Winston Hearing Reveals Accuser's Words, and Florida State's Complicity
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Coach Jimbo Fisher with Jameis Winston after Florida State won the A.C.C. championship. Winston, cleared in a conduct hearing, will play on. Credit Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Sports of The Times
By JULIET MACUR
Some things from that night two years ago, she says she remembers with astounding clarity.
"I remember being raped," she said.
"I remember pleading with him to stop clearly."
"I remember one of his friends telling him to stop and saying, 'She is saying no clearly.' "
She remembers being carried from a bedroom into a bathroom by the man she says raped her. She remembers that he locked the door behind him, and she remembers how he held her down while, she said, "I tried to struggle and resist him."
"I remember those thing as clearly as they were in 2012," she said.
These words are from the woman who accused Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston of raping her in December 2012. Earlier this month she told her story to a former judge at Winston's student conduct hearing — a hearing that wound up clearing Winston of breaking any of the university's rules.
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In clearing Winston, Major B. Harding, the former Florida Supreme Court chief justice who presided over the hearing, said that the evidence was "insufficient to satisfy the burden of proof."
The comments come from a transcript of that hearing obtained by The New York Times this week. In her own voice, Winston's accuser gave her fullest account yet of what she says happened that evening.
The transcript also includes the testimony of a victim's advocate who met with the accuser just hours after the woman reported that she had been raped. The advocate testified that the woman's demeanor on that morning in 2012 was consistent with that of someone traumatized by sexual assault.
Her brain was switching off, the advocate said, describing that state of mind as a defensive mechanism "to help people survive traumatic events."
What did Winston have to say about all that? In a statement he read during the hearing, he called her a liar. Then, nothing. He declined to answer questions, as has been the case again and again for the last two years, until Harding cornered him.
Harding asked Winston "in what manner, verbally or physically," did the woman give her consent to sex.
Winston said his accuser provided consent not with words, but rather by "moaning."
His answer was ridiculous and infuriating, and just shows how Florida State rolls these days. Or, should I say, how Florida State football steamrolls these days.
Nothing to see here. Move along. Just head straight into the stands for the team's next game.
Next week, the Seminoles will play in college football's first playoff, meeting Oregon at the Rose Bowl in a semifinal that Florida State hopes will be nothing but a speed bump on the road to a second straight national championship. Fans at the game might want to bring a towel — not to swing over their heads as they cheer, but to use after the game.
To use after showering.
Continue reading the main story Anyone who has supported the program for the past couple of years should feel dirty by now.
The team stars Winston, who was the beneficiary of a botched investigation of the rape by the Tallahassee Police Department. Two more Seminoles standouts, defensive end Chris Casher and defensive back Ronald Darby, refused, along with Winston, to answer questions about the rape case in Winston's conduct hearing. Some would call their silence obstructing justice. In Tallahassee, though, it's probably called teamwork.
Continue reading the main story Transcript of Winston Hearing Reveals Accuser's Words, and Florida State's Complicity
The Seminoles may be a team that doesn't have to follow rules as long as it keeps winning. Domestic assaults. Theft. Shootouts with pellet guns in public spaces. A hit-and-run. Few of the incidents were ever aggressively pursued by the police.
At a time when Florida State is garnering nationwide attention for earning a place in the lucrative College Football Playoff — and that publicity is part the rationale for financing a top football team in the first place — fans outside of Tallahassee might find it difficult to get behind these Seminoles, who will just about slither into the Rose Bowl next week.
Are we expecting too much of these players and their university? Probably, yes. After all, it's a place that still espouses the tomahawk chop.
Though the accuser has had her name posted on Twitter by Winston's lawyer, and has received death threats, and has had to leave the university, she at least had a voice when she testified at Winston's hearing.
"I know what happened that night, and I am apparently the only one of us who is willing to tell that truth," she said.
She said she wanted to speak out to see if she could force Winston to be accountable for what she called his "violent behavior" and to warn other women about trusting him. She said she "wanted the truth to be heard."
The accuser's words: Jameis Winston "raped me; there is no other term for it."
She remembers it. But who else will after the kickoff of next week's game?
Email: juliet@nytimes.com
A version of this article appears in print on December 24, 2014, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Accuser's Words, and Florida State's Complicity. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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