Report reveals more about assault claim involving Dodgers
A police report obtained from the Glendale Police Department adds new details about a February 2015 incident involving a 17-year-old girl who claimed she was groped and physically assaulted while attending a party at a Glendale hotel room hosted by two minor league players with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The issue surfaced Friday night, when the Washington Post reported team officials never went to police after learning the girl had been involved in an incident at the hotel.
The report, obtained by
Monday via a public records request, says the girl was invited to the party by two women she had met a few times prior after chatting through Facebook.
The incident and ‘hush money’
According to the report, the girl told officers that she was pressured into drinking half a bottle of vodka and laid down on one of the player’s beds after she began feeling sick.
The girl then said one of the players laid down next to her and began fondling her inappropriately while the other three were in the bathroom. She said the player stopped when the three others returned, the report said.
The girl told officers she would have had sex with the player if she weren’t so highly intoxicated, the report added.
The girl soon vomited on a pull-out bed she had moved to when one of the women shoved her face in the bed and doused her with water, according to the report. The girl told police that both women punched and kicked her until she fled from the hotel room and called a friend to pick her up.
The girl later told her grandmother about the incident, who then emailed what she had learned to Dodgers representatives. The team is a member of the Cactus League and conducts its spring training at Camelback Ranch, 91st Avenue and Camelback Road, near the Glendale-Phoenix border.
The girl told police that her grandmother received an email from Gabe Kapler, the Dodgers’ director of player development at the time, offering them “hush money” and to meet for dinner, the report states.
The report says the girl emailed Kapler and told him she wouldn’t pursue charges or report what happened to police. The report does not mention whether the girl or her grandmother took money from Kapler.
Official never reports assault
The report says police first learned of the incident when one of the girl’s case workers at the Department of Child Safety reported it one or two weeks later. Officers interviewed the girl at a group home where she resided.
The report said the girl ran away and wasn’t found until April, when she was picked up for driving a stolen car. Officers said the girl refuse to speak further about the incident, saying she didn’t want to deal with it. The report says officers deactivated the case after the conversation.
isn’t publishing the names of the women or players as none have been charged.
After the Post story was published, Kapler, who now is the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, addressed the incident and why he did not go to police. He said he only knew about the assault by the women but hadn’t heard anything about sexual assault from anyone.
Kapler said the grandmother asked him for money and that he instead offered to have the players meet the girl at a public place and apologize. Kapler wrote that the girl wasn’t interested and had emailed him to say she wanted to move on.
Kapler said he didn’t report the incident to police because he wanted to respect the girl’s wishes and that he would have handled things differently had he heard about the sexual assault allegations.
Kapler said he couldn’t suspend the minor league players because it happened during the off season and noted they were eventually released from the team.