When the Boston Red Sox traded their franchise player, Mookie Betts, and number two starter, David Price, to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the return was longtime prospect Akex Verdugo.

As Jessica Quiroli reported last year:

Dodgers minor league players Alex Verdugo, James Baldwin and Julio Urias, were preparing for the regular season with the Dodgers at Camelback Ranch, the team’s spring training facility. Verdugo and Baldwin partied with the women at a Hampton Inn near the stadium, including the one who was underage. Nick Francona, then assistant of player development for the Dodgers, said Urias was present earlier, but wasn’t included in discussions about the incident. * * * Per the police report, as the night went on, the girl became violently ill and vomited on a bed. And, as has been widely reported, the other two girls began beating her up. One of the players filmed the girl’s beating, then posted the video to social media. The girls asked her to leave. The girl called a friend nearby to pick her up. There was more she was holding back. She later explained that something far worse had happened to her. A case manager with the Arizona Department of Safety contacted law enforcement. During an interview with the police, the girl said that one of the players in the hotel room had sexually assaulted her. Baldwin was investigated by the Glendale Police Department for the assault. The girl explained that she’d been drinking a lot, and felt ill, so she rested on one of the beds. Baldwin approached her and began fondling her breasts, then put his hand under her underwear, fondling her clitoris. This wasn’t consensual, she told them. She was passing out during the act. He gave up trying when the rest of the group re-entered the room, perhaps, she said, out of frustration.

Verdugo was reportedly present for both the girl’s beating and for the sexual assault on the girl by Baldwin, and did not intervene. He was named in the police report filed by the survivor, a report which also noted her physical condition:

There were photos on record of her physical assault. Her eye was bruised, her face swollen.

This story has since been confirmed by Sports Illustrated. Still, just as it was when it initially happened, the story just...vanished. It’s also worth noting that this is not the only incident of sexual assault the Dodgers are accused of quietly shelving. Now, a year after Quiroli’s report and the Sports Illustrated confirmation, Verdugo has been dealt with nary a public mention of his - at best - tacit participation in a sexual assault.

This is how Verdugo was described by MLB.com’s Ian Browne.

Outfielder Alex Verdugo, a 23-year-old left-handed hitter with upside, is the key return that the Red Sox will acquire in the trade with the Dodgers.

Logan Mullen at NESN said this about Verdugo:

Verdugo is not quite the *unknown* commodity he was just a few years ago. The 23-year-old has appeared in the big leagues each of the last three seasons, playing 106 games with the Dodgers in 2019. In those 106 games he hit .294 with 12 homers and 44 RBIs. Prior to last season, Verdugo ranked as the No. 19 prospect in Major League Baseball by Baseball Prospectus. He projects to hit with a fair amount of power, but also contact (his overall hitting ability ranked highest of any Dodgers prospect prior to last season). But despite his high offensive upside, his arm is what really has gotten folks’ attention.

Joe Giglio of NJ.com said this:

The former four-time top-100 prospect in the game is a plug-and-play everyday outfielder, filling Betts’ shoes in the outfield for the Red Sox. As a left-handed hitter, Verdugo has emerging power and could become a 20-plus home run hitter and a doubles machine at Fenway Park. Verdugo won’t be arbitration eligible until after 2022 and can’t hit free agency until 2025.

And on and on. Not one major sports news outlet talked about the fact that Verdugo has been credibly implicated in at least being present for a sexual assault.

The law differentiates between the principal to a crime (i.e., the person who commits a crime), an accomplice to a crime (a person who helps commit it), and an accessory to a crime (a person who conceals the crime with full knowledge of the crime having been committed). Under Arizona law, to be an accessory to a crime requires that the accessory not have been present when the crime was being committed. On the other hand, in a case called State v. McNair, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that being present for a crime makes you an accomplice, even if you do not actively participate.

Simply stated, an accomplice is one who knowingly and with criminal intent participates, associates, or concurs with another in the commission of a crime. . . . Although a defendant’s presence at the time and place of the crime in the absence of preconcert does not establish guilt as an aider, abettor or principal, an intent to engage in the criminal venture may be shown by the relationship of the parties and their conduct before and after the offense

In McNair, the court concluded that merely being present for a robbery was enough for accomplice liability where the defendant was close enough to the crime to have blood on his shirt and did nothing to stop it. In other words, concurring or associating with the crime can be legally satisfied by a person’s presence without objection. And accomplice liability, in Arizona, can mean legal culpability to the same extent of the principal.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that if the reports in question are accurate, Alex Verdugo was legally culpable in a sexual assault, and no one in sports media seems to care. The Boston Red Sox traded their franchise player for a man who is listed on a police report as being present when a girl was raped, and no one in sports media seems to care. PED suspensions are reported with a player’s name for years. This incident has been essentially forgotten.

But there’s one other problem we need to address. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how industry silence regarding the allegations and criminal charges against Jonah Keri for domestic violence were symptomatic of the domestic abuse problem rotting baseball. That this is true can no longer be seriously disputed. We have, as an industry, grown numb to the problem. It is ignored. We pretend it doesn’t exist. Apathy is always the greater evil.

Sheryl Ring is a litigation attorney and Legal Director at Open Communities, a non-profit legal aid agency in the Chicago suburbs. You can reach her on twitter at @Ring_Sheryl. The opinions expressed here are solely the author’s. This post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.