Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Time for inquiry to end, ex-NFL star Irvin says
Former NFL star Michael Irvin is adamant: He had no sexual contact with a woman who has accused him of sexual battery, and he says authorities should wrap up their investigation.
“This was not a case of consensual versus nonconsensual. Nothing happened, period. … There was no sexual contact whatsoever,” Irvin said Tuesday, sitting alongside his attorney, Kenneth Padowitz, during a news conference in Padowitz’s downtown Fort Lauderdale office.
“It’s been too long, that’s all I’m saying. Make a decision. Make a move,” he said, referring to the investigation.
The State Attorney’s Office for Broward County acknowledged Tuesday that it is looking into the case for possible charges. Fort Lauderdale police recently forwarded their investigation to that office.
Irvin, 51, appeared eager to answer questions asked by the media and did take a few, but Padowitz often interjected when the questions were addressed directly to his client.
Padowitz, a prosecutor for 16 years with the State Attorney’s Office for Broward County, said that given his experience in the sex crimes unit, the case against his client has no likelihood of conviction.
“I am confident that after having looked at thousands of these types of cases, that under the law there is no evidence and in fact affirmative evidence that shows that Michael Irvin, what he has been saying all along, is in fact true,” Padowitz said.
He added that the evidence includes video from cameras inside the W Hotel at 401 N. Fort Lauderdale Blvd. The alleged victim reported to police at 4 a.m March 22 that a sexual battery had occurred inside Room 2004.
Irvin has missed or been replaced in several scheduled speaking engagements since the allegations surfaced. Irvin said in a taped broadcast interview with Fox 4 News in Dallas that the woman is a friend he has known for about a decade and that he has never had any romantic or sexual relationship with her.
He said he offered his hotel room to friends to sleep in after a night out because he was going to the airport for a 6 a.m. flight. He was with a longtime male friend and the woman inside the room, and the man left. Irving said he showered and packed for his flight. Irving said the woman was drinking that night and had become “more friendly than usual” while in the room, but he told her to “chill out.”
“I stopped her,” Irving said. He said the woman accompanied him to the hotel lobby and he told her to go back to the room and rest.
“This has been the most difficult thing that my family and I have ever had to endure,” he said at the onset of the news conference.
Irving, who is from Fort Lauderdale, was a star player at St. Thomas Aquinas High School and the University of Miami. He played a key role in three Superbowl wins with the Dallas Cowboys.