But football is the least of Washington’s concerns at this point.

And beg and plead that all commenters adhere to this philosophy.

Either he did something unfathomable, or he’s being wrongly accused. Either way, this is awful, and I hope justice is correctly served.

Prosecuting attorney Andrea Hayes said only that she had been referred a case on Derrick Washington.

That referral usually comes from the police in the form of a report.

In most cases, the police are the ones who would have referred her to the Order of Protection process.

also, if police wereinvestigating the allegations they usually don’t like to comment publicly on that stuff when there isn’t an actual case at the time.

There may not have been a police report made yet on this situation.

<blockquote? Did Pinkel want to do it closer to the season to see if there’d be a resolution at the 7/21 court date (which, again, was a month ago).>

My guess is they were waiting for a resolution, one hasn’t come, and Pinkel can’t wait any longer with this out there.

But…it still doesn’t make much sense with the timing. What has changed?

1. Yes.
2. Not arrested. Order of Protection is a civil remedy.
3. Prosecutor can file charges or nolle pros. My bet is on the latter. Lots of time with no charges filed means it is probably a crappy case.

It sounds like they were evaluating the situation before they released any information, and since you’re dealing with an incredibly sensitive situation, not just relative to Washington but also to the victim. You don’t want to give legs to something like that if you don’t have to.

He’s not charged with anything, or restrained from contact. They don’t need to tell us if they did something to him in the summer.

The story was posted at 9:59 PM, two minutes before the evening news, or SportsCenter, could run with it. There’s something about this, that right now, seems dirty. I don’t know why I feel that way, but I do.

The civil case is the Order of Protection. And that case was dismissed by the Judge since there was no evidence (i.e. testimony of the alleged victim).

The criminal case would be filed by the Prosecutor. I guess the only quote she gave was that she had been referred a case. She eventually will have to say whether she will file or not.

as many of you know, I work at the Missourian but not in the newspaper’s newsroom (I have some connection to the magazine faculty and often teach a magazine staff editing class, but it’s a semi-separate publication). The overnight note I got last night said that the Missourian got “a tip” about this at 4:30 and reporters went down to the courthouse to check it out. I’m as puzzled as the rest of you (I was in the bowels of our server room until like 6 last night and out of the loop).

We do have an 11 a.m. planning meeting that’s open to the public. I’m certainly going to be there to see what I can glean. Third floor, Lee Hills Hall, Eighth and Elm.

Alden (and I assume Pinkel) have known about this for some time now, but since no charges were filed and no one was arrested, they didn’t have a reason to do anything about. Now that the season is only a week out, the team’s focus shifts from preparing for the season to preparing for Illinois, and it’s Pinkel’s responsibility to prepare his team for success without Washington.

I’m guessing that Alden and Pinkel believe the prosecutor will decide soon whether or not to pursue with charges, but Pinkel didn’t want to create a situation where charges came down a day before the Illinois game and be forced to react at the last second. Better to get ahead of the story and suspend Washington from the team now – it will be easier to bring Washington back into the gameplan then to adjust for his sudden removal.

I wouldn’t read much into that. We can take the set of facts we’ve been given and go down the road toward two completely opposite conclusions: 1) that D-Wash did something really, really bad, and the reason it hadn’t come to light yet is that the victim feels she needs extra protection from him, and 2) that the victim doesn’t have a case and only leaked this now to hurt D-Wash right before his final season began. In other words, we don’t have enough information to draw any concrete conclusions.

Assuming Pinkel knew what was going on back in July (and since Alden said he knew, I assume Pinkel knew too), I almost wonder if the suspension is due as much to getting Washington out of the glare as anything else. I can’t imagine anything new came to light yesterday from their standpoint (though I obviously don’t know that for sure), so maybe they felt it best (for him and for the team) if he wasn’t a distraction right now. Complete guess on my part.

There’s a ton of good information in this thread.