Photo : Christian Petersen ( Getty )

Oftentimes, the worst examples of society’s despicable penchant for immediately blaming and/or discrediting women who report being victims of sexual assault are relegated to anonymous, obscure social media posters and website commenters. Other times, the dumbfucks embodying the trend are people with real names and prominent jobs. Which brings us to Omar Kelly, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Dolphins beat writer whose first reaction to hearing about a lawsuit against Antonio Brown that claims the Patriots receiver forcibly raped a woman was to explain all the reasons why he thinks the alleged victim is lying.



This morning, not even a full day after news broke last night that Brown’s former trainer Britney Taylor was suing him in civil court for three instances of sexual assault, Kelly went on a Twitter rant laying out why, in his expert opinion, women who don’t follow his specific protocol for how to deal with being raped are not to be believed. Despite originally blowing off hundreds of responses from sane people trying to show him the error of his ways, someone eventually convinced Kelly to delete some (but not all!) of the offending tweets. But there are still screenshots:


You might expect that a reporter, and an NFL one at that, would have the compassion and common sense not to use his considerable platform to perpetuate the exact kinds of baseless stigmas that discourage so many women from reporting sexual assaults in the first place, or would at least be smart enough to keep his mouth shut until more evidence emerges one way or the other. But if you knew anything about Kelly, who is infamous amongst the thankfully limited set of readers and colleagues in the South Florida area for being an idiot and a shitty reporter, this really wouldn’t surprise you at all.

Update [5:03 p.m.]: Kelly has tweeted an apology: