Tennis star Serena Williams has come under fire for her controversial comments about the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case, in which she essentially blamed the victim.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine posted Tuesday, Williams was watching the news with reporter Stephen Rodrick when the case was being covered.
“I’m not blaming the girl, but if you’re a 16-year-old and you’re drunk like that, your parents should teach you —don’t take drinks from other people,” Williams said.
“She’s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember? It could have been much worse. She’s lucky. Obviously I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different,” Williams said.
The two accused, 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma’Lik Richmond, were each sentenced to a year in a juvenile detention facility in March.
Williams later issued an apology for what she ‘supposedly’ said:
“What happened in Steubenville was a real shock for me. I was deeply saddened. For someone to be raped, and at only 16, is such a horrible tragedy! For both families involved – that of the rape victim and of the accused. I am currently reaching out to the girl’s family to let her know that I am deeply sorry for what was written in the Rolling Stone article. What was written – what I supposedly said – is insensitive and hurtful, and I by no means would say or insinuate that she was at all to blame.
“I have fought all of my career for women’s equality, women’s equal rights, respect in their fields – anything I could do to support women I have done. My prayers and support always goes out to the rape victim. In this case, most especially, to an innocent sixteen year old child.”
Williams is known for being aggressive and opinionated. At the 2011 U.S. Open, the tennis star was fined for verbally abusing a lineswoman who called her on a foot fault.
Another opinion Williams expressed in the Rolling Stones article was her disapproval of high tax rates.
“Seventy-five percent doesn’t seem legal,” she said, referring to the rate in France. “Nobody does anything because the government pays you to be broke. So why work?”
Rodrick attributes William’s “no-safety-net political philosophy” to her childhood growing up in Compton, Calif., a town with a high rate of gang activity and where her older sister was killed by gun violence in 2003.
