DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710160708

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA 

                                            LENGTH:   93 lines

OUT OF LINE OUTSIDE THE LINES

PUBLIC HEROES, PRIVATE FELONS

Athletes and Crimes Against Women

JEFF BENEDICT

Northeastern University Press. 254 pp. $24.95.

Few pro football players reach the ``walk-on-water'' status of the 40-year-old Warren Moon, an exceptionally skilled and good-looking athlete who, with the Houston Oilers, enjoyed that once-rare distinction of being a black star quarterback.

Widely regarded as a professional role model - a family man, a philanthropist, the National Football League's Man of the Year in 1989 - Moon became a favorite commercial spokesman. So popular was his televised image that few fans outside of Houston knew Moon liked to frequent strip bars, had extramarital affairs with young ``models,'' and beat his wife.

After his 1994 trade to the Minnesota Vikings, Moon was even charged by a cheerleader with sexual harassment.

He paid her off.

Jeff Benedict couldn't ask for a better case study than Warren Moon for ``Public Heroes, Private Felons,'' his provocative new expose of athletes' sexual and domestic violence toward women. Many of the underpinnings that Benedict identifies for such abuse - including the celebrity athlete's god-like status, promiscuous lifestyle and lack of accountability - pertain to Moon, who slapped and choked his wife Felicia into near-unconsciousness in July 1995 but was acquitted by a sympathetic jury.

And not unexpectedly so.

Felicia Moon, fearful, media-shy, and aware of all she had to lose if her husband was convicted, had wanted to drop the charges. But with the O.J. Simpson murder trial on-going, the prosecutor was not about to turn a blind eye to another violent sports ``hero.''

A ``blind eye'' is, in fact, the bottom-line cause of what Benedict, formerly director of research for the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Boston's Northeastern University, describes, and convincingly documents, as a ``fundamental disrespect of women'' by athletes. His easy-to-read book is chock-full of revealing interviews with hundreds of players, coaches, victims, attorneys, and sports officials.

To say that such misogynism is complex, multi-factored and deeply rooted in American culture is almost to understate it. It's beyond belief, for example, that college basketball stars (University of Minnesota) and NFL players (New Orleans Saints) can characterize gang rapes as ``consensual'' group sex or talk about ``peer pressure'' and ``manhood'' in explaining such deviant behavior. It's even worse that a starstruck public buys it and the sports industry looks the other way.

While at the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, Benedict was asked to collect data ``to counter the growing perception that athletes are disproportionately involved in violence against women.'' After monitoring the popular press and participating in three studies of athletes and crimes against women, Benedict, now a law student, couldn't do it. Though his numbers are inevitably flawed because of the reporting process - newspapers are hardly a primary source; many incidents go unreported, etc. - Benedict's evidence suggested the contrary.

In his book, Benedict smartly avoids the futile debate of whether athletes are more likely to abuse women than other men are. Instead, he presents in a case-by-case manner - mostly, football and basketball players - a disturbing pattern of violence toward women and an institutionalized response of indifference.

``The risk of offending athletes . . . ,'' Benedict writes, ``has encouraged otherwise well-meaning men to shrink from standing up to America's most popular batterers and rapists.''

Gifted athletes, Benedict notes, first garner attention in adolescence when they are singled out by coaches, teachers, classmates, parents, etc., for preferential treatment. Early on, they learn that their off-the-field actions, no matter how irresponsible or harmful, have no consequences; and the socially ill-prepared among them can be big trouble. Men of physical action, they seek out challenges, ``prey,'' and become accustomed to getting what they want, Benedict theorizes.

That women, especially one-night-stand groupies, are readily available for sex can further distort such athletes' perceptions - and those of the public. Promiscuity, says Benedict, only reinforces ``athletes' habitual self-gratification.''

The victim's ``status'' - often that of groupie or prostitute - also plays a part in the prosecution of any sexual crimes. Benedict thoroughly and evenhandedly explores it, concluding: Only ``Miss America'' can get a conviction.

But if her assailant is Mike Tyson, she's going to pay for it. No less a power figure than Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz will drag her name through the mud and tamper with enough jurors to re-try the case in the media.

Ultimately, Benedict advocates a strict ``code of conduct for men who are privileged to earn a living playing sports'' and severe penalties for any breaches. A reasonable approach. But when it comes to sports hero worship, reason is in short supply. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma, an attorney, is book editor for The

Virginian-Pilot.

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