Phillies manager Gabe Kapler defends himself with statement

Phillies manager Gabe Kapler defended himself in a statement regarding his response of an alleged assault of a woman while working for the Dodgers.

Friday night, the Washington Post published an article alleging that Phillies manager Gabe Kapler, then working as the Dodgers’ director of player development, did not report the alleged assault of a 17-year-old girl while in the company of two Dodgers minor-leaguers. In the report, the Post stated that the girl accused one of the players of sexual assault.

In the article, Kapler stated that he acted as directed by the Dodgers organization and that they did not know of the sexual assault allegations. Charges were never filed as the girl decided not to cooperate with an investigation.

Feeling the need to explain himself further, Kapler published his statement on his personal blog, Kaplifestyle. Matt Breen of Philly.com screenshot and uploaded the statement to Twitter in case Kapler’s blog is down, as it was when he first published it.

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In the statement, Kapler details his involvement of the situation from start to finish. He says one player passed out in a hotel room due to alcohol consumption while the girl in question threw up on another bed in the room. Two other women started hitting her and pouring water on her in response, while the conscious Dodger videotaped and shared the incident to Snapchat. Kapler stated that this series of events was corroborated by multiple events.

Feeling remorse for the situation, the two players wanted to apologize for the incident directly to the girl, which Kapler tried to arrange with her and her grandmother over dinner. She did not want to, so the idea was dropped.

Later on, the girl and her grandmother emailed Kapler about some sort of financial assistance, which he passed up the chain in the organization. He says he never engaged in any discussions about a payment.

Kapler stated that he nor the Dodgers contacted the police as the girl’s grandmother told them not to “turn [the victim] in” before she was ready to talk about it. She ultimately told Kapler that she did not want to talk about it further, so he did not want to go against her wishes.

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Later on, Kapler was contacted by a lawyer representing the player in question asked him to share all personal communications with the girl and her grandmother, which Kapler did. At this point, Kapler said he felt that his “role was complete” as it “was in the hands of the police and the legal system.”

Kapler maintained that throughout this process the club did not know of any allegations of sexual assault. Had they been told, Kapler said they would have treated the situation far differently. He said his main goal was to teach the players involved better decision-making to prevent a similar situation from having again.

All in all, Kapler stated that based on everything he knew at the time, he feels acted to the best of his ability. He admits that he could have taken the matter out of the girl’s hands, but he felt that it was best to let her decide how to proceed.