Meyer continues to fail women
All the slogans and fancy posters touting respect for women mean nothing unless you actually believe and support women.
When we say we’ve been harassed. When we say we’ve been sexually assaulted. When we say we’ve been physically abused.
This is what Urban Meyer has gotten wrong from the start and, judging by his news conference Monday and many other attempts at spin the last two days, still doesn’t get.
When someone says they were robbed or sideswiped, society’s inclination is not to automatically discredit them. To ask if they’d left a window open or wonder why they didn’t park closer to the curb. To require irrefutable proof of being victimized and even then still raise a questioning eyebrow.
Yet that’s the way too many people still respond when women say they’ve been abused or assaulted or harassed.
And it’s the way Meyer continues to respond to Courtney Smith.
It’s clear that, even now, Meyer doesn’t believe Courtney Smith. He has referenced her troubled marriage, spoken of his sorrow at what she and her children have gone through, said repeatedly that he was only trying to help ensure former receivers coach Zach Smith could still support his family “the way a man should.”
Not once, and he was given numerous opportunities Monday to do so, has he said he believes Courtney Smith was a victim of domestic violence.
Not once has Meyer apologized for letting Zach Smith’s excuses outweigh the arrest report by the Gainesville police in 2009. Not once has he acknowledged there are myriad reasons why women either don’t report or decline to press charges, being pregnant or having children with their abuser among them.
Meyer didn’t do any of this because he doesn’t believe Courtney Smith. And that doubt, that disbelief, that suspicion that there has to be more to the story than what she said means Meyer doesn’t respect Courtney Smith.
“All I can go by is what I was told by law enforcement, and that was that there was no domestic violence,” Meyer said. Except there was, back in 2009. By continuing to deny that Gainesville PD report, Meyer continues to discredit Courtney Smith and open the door for everyone else to do so, too. That’s not respect. That’s the exact opposite of it.
Meyer’s lies at Big Ten Media Day – call them what they were because they most definitely were not a “misstatement” – and his sudden curiosity about how long text messages would be retained on his cell phone are troubling enough. This is a man whose sole priority is self-preservation, not doing the right thing or even being a good role model for the young men with whom he’s been entrusted.
Worse is that, despite what he claims, no one should have any confidence that Meyer would do anything different if presented with a similar scenario now. His mindset about marriage and domestic violence and even women is stuck in the 1950s, and he has shown no interest in updating it.
Had Meyer done even the most basic research on domestic violence, he would understand why Courtney Smith dropped charges against her husband in 2009. Why she stayed with him. Why their relationship would have seemed so volatile to outsiders. Why all of Zach Smith’s other “red flags” are part and parcel of what Courtney Smith alleged all those years ago.
Had Meyer truly been shaken by this incident, as he professes, he would not have waited a month before uttering Courtney Smith’s name or let several days pass after he was suspended before apologizing to her. He chalks this up to exhaustion and emotion, but I can assure you the trauma Courtney Smith endured is worse than anything Meyer did during Ohio State’s investigation and his subsequent suspension.
And if he was sincere about not making a similar mistake in the future, about respecting Courtney Smith, he would have reached out to her by now so he could understand how he could have gotten it so horribly wrong.
But he didn’t do that. Didn’t do any of that. Because he doesn’t believe Courtney Smith, and he sure doesn’t respect her.
Meyer said several times Monday that he needs to ask more questions if confronted with a situation like this again. Yet he also stubbornly clung to his insistence that this wasn’t about domestic violence but rather a matter of a troubled employee who Meyer went too far in trying to help.
He cannot – will not – suspend his experience and privilege long enough to consider any other scenario. That’s not respect, that’s ego and arrogance.
Telling your players to respect women and making it one of your “core values” is all well and good. But those are just words.
It’s how you treat women when they are most vulnerable that shows whether you really do respect them or not, and Meyer continues to fail that test. Instead of respecting women, he continues to fail them.