Witness Statements From Roethlisberger Incident Paint An Ugly Picture

↵↵Steelers president Art Rooney addressed the media on Thursday afternoon and talked about how he expected NFL commish Roger Goodell to take several weeks to review accusations leveled at Ben Roethlisberger. Then, roughly an hour after Rooney finished his session with the media, handwritten police statements detailing the alleged incident hit the web courtesy of The Smoking Gun. Will the lurid details in the statement change exactly how soon Goodell rules on the issue? Due to their graphic nature, I’ll go ahead and call out NSFW/earmuffs right off the bat. Details after the jump.↵

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↵↵⇥“[Roethlisberger]‘s bodyguard came and took my arm and said come with me. He scored me into a side door/hallway and sat me on a stool. He left and Ben came back with his penis out of his pants. I told him it wasn’t ok, no we don’t need to do this and I proceded to get up and try to leave. I went to the first door I saw, which happened to be a bathroom. He followed me into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. I still said no, this is not OK, and he then had sex with me. He said it was OK. He then left without saying anything. I went out of the hallway/door to the side where I saw my friends. We left Capital and went to the first police car we saw.”↵↵↵Also unsettling is the fact that a friend of the alleged victim, Nicole Biancoriore, made multiple attempts to get her friend out of the situation, including talking with the bar’s owner, and she was blown off. Here’s part of her statement:↵

↵↵⇥I attempted to get [redacted] out of the room by speaking with the owner of Capital City, Rocky. I told Rocky that [redacted] was too drunk to be back there and he told me not to worry because Ben would not do anything to ruin his reputation.↵↵Oh, that’s reassuring. NFL players never make decisions in bars that might ruin their reputation. Sounds like an owner of a bar in a small town that was pretty fired up to have a celebrity in town and didn’t want to ruin the fun of such an event.↵↵Also of note: the alleged victim was wearing a name tag that said “DTF” -- meaning “Down To F---” -- as an inside joke with her girlfriends. (Details here.) Roethlisberger allegedly said “All my bitches, take some shots,” which upset one of the alleged victim’s friends enough to leave the VIP area.↵

↵↵Documents obtained by The Smoking Gun also bring back a few things that we already knew after the district attorney’s comments from earlier this week. No samples were ever taken from Roethlisberger because the evidence taken from the victim was such a small amount that there wouldn’t be enough to draw a match. It also discusses the fact that on March 17, a lawyer representing the victim asked that the case just be dropped because of the “criminal trial would be a very intrusive personal experience.”↵

↵↵In light of these details, I can’t imagine Goodell sits by for weeks as Rooney suggested today. Goodell has never needed charges to drop the hammer on someone in the past, so everyone will be watching how he reacts to this latest pile of information.↵

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