Where does a rape allegation fit in the legacy of Kobe Bryant?

The tragic death of basketball superstar Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna brought the nation to a standstill and then the internet to a storm. Amid hundreds of millions of mourners memorializing Bryant’s life and discussing the horror of the helicopter crash that ended it, a smaller number of dissenters cut through the grief with their own axes to grind. Reporters resharing the story of the sometimes-forgotten rape allegation against Bryant from 2003 provoked turmoil on Twitter, with thousands of livid Bryant fans leading to Felicia Sonmez deleting her tweets and eventually facing suspension from the Washington Post.

Given the shock of Bryant’s death and the tragedy twice over of his daughter and multiple others also perishing in the crash, it’s no surprise that people such as Sonmez and Nathan McDermott stoked ire. Journalists had broken the story and the hearts of millions before Bryant’s wife had even learned she’d have to bury her husband and her daughter. Such sensitivities were at stake, and Sonmez’s detractors were viscerally incensed by her disregard for them.

Dying doesn’t make you a saint, and sure, Sonmez was right that, perhaps after a period of time longer than she gave Bryant, “any public figure is worth remembering in their totality.” So it’s worth evaluating not just what Bryant stood accused of but also what followed.

The facts that both Bryant and his accuser agree on are simple enough. Bryant, then at the pinnacle of his prowess, was staying at the Lodge and Spa at Cordillera in Colorado, where the 19-year-old accuser worked. She escorted Bryant to his room and then, per his request, returned 15 minutes later to tour him around the resort. When they returned to his room and she proceeded to leave after some small talk, he asked her for a hug. She consented. He then began kissing her. She consented. This is where their accounts diverge.

The forensic evidence of the case appeared to corroborate the accuser’s account that after she attempted to prevent the encounter from escalating, Bryant blocked the door, choked her, bent her over a chair, and raped her from behind. After the police visited the woman 12 hours after the encounter, the alleged victim obtained an examination from sexual assault nurse examiners at a nearby hospital the very next day. The rape kit found “several lacerations” in the accuser’s vagina, and “injuries were consistent with penetrating genital trauma.” The trauma was severe enough that Bryant likely made her bleed at the time, leaving bloodstains on his shirt. Bruises also were found on her neck and jaw, which the accuser claims were the result of Bryant choking her tighter every time she said “no.”

When taken to the police for questioning, Bryant first denied having any sexual encounter with the woman, let alone hugging or kissing her. When told the accuser got a rape kit, Bryant immediately asked if there would be any way to “settle” the case, conceding that he did in fact have “totally consensual” sex with her. Bryant argued that he knew the encounter was consensual because when he asked if he could ejaculate on her face, he listened when she said no.

After months of the media leaking her identity and Bryant’s defense team smearing her sexual history (she had a single consensual sexual encounter some days prior to the alleged assault), the accuser decided not to testify, effectively dropping the case and sparing Bryant the possibility of life in prison. By some estimates, Bryant likely paid the accuser upward of $2 million in a civil lawsuit settlement.

The available evidence indicates that Bryant committed one of the most heinous crimes of which man is capable. If the accuser’s account was true, this was no case of a drunken dorm room misunderstanding. A six-foot-six-inch athletic hero likely strangled a teenage stranger in her workplace while he raped her. But does what may have been the greatest malfeasance of his life deserve to define his legacy?

There’s no question that if it were Harvey Weinstein who died, we would have no problem letting his reign of terror over Hollywood define him. But Weinstein didn’t just commit a crime. He allegedly committed crimes repeatedly, hundreds or even thousands of times, and to this day is doubling down on them, using the exact same techniques on the reporters covering his criminal trial that he had used to silence his victims.

Bryant’s case may have arisen prior to the #MeToo movement, making his defense team’s smear of his accuser and relatively rapid rehabilitation much easier. But Bryant did something almost no celebrity accused of sexual assault did: He publicly acknowledged that the woman might have been telling the truth.

“I also want to make it clear that I do not question the motives of this young woman,” Bryant said in a statement issued after the criminal charges against him were dropped. “No money has been paid to this woman. She has agreed that this statement will not be used against me in the civil case. Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”

The media pounced on the $4 million diamond apology ring he gave to his wife after the whole affair as his means of repentance. But Bryant may have done the truly unthinkable for the patrician class by actually seeking redemption.

After Bryant had returned to his superstar status on the court, the his marriage cratered to its nadir in 2011, when Vanessa Bryant filed for divorce and sought full custody of their two daughters, Natalia and Gianna. But despite a tabloid frenzy about the former philanderer and his reportedly demanding wife, they reconciled and revamped their philanthropic efforts. Suddenly, Kobe Bryant, who had already spent a good deal of his time helping children and hospitals, was everywhere. He toured the world to help veterans and kick-starting initiatives for kids sports. He was en route to one of those very ventures, the Mamba Sports Academy, with his daughter, who he proudly boasted would continue his athletic legacy, when he died.

Perhaps it was all an act, a heartless PR offensive designed to mask a past evil. But that seems unlikely.

“I started to consider the mortality of what I was doing,” Kobe Bryant told GQ in 2015 of his reckoning with the alleged assault:

As McDermott noted, no, the rape allegation, given its severity and credibility, is not “immaterial” to his story. But neither is his course correction in life and the extremely rare act of a celebrity realizing that, yes, he must change his ways to be a person worthy of adoration, not just coast on his fame.

What we know is this: In the years leading to his death, Kobe Bryant rose to the occasion and became a better husband, father, and hero to his fans. He admitted he did something, even if he declined to call it what it was, gravely wrong. And he spent the rest of his life trying to reverse it. Both his sins and his successes are a part of his story, and we can only treat them both with the respect and understanding that issues of such magnitude weigh. Was he redeemed? Now, only God knows.