Sexual Assault may be the Reason Women are Absent in Sports
The recent Me Too movement is a hashtag used on social media to bring awareness to sexual assault and harassment. The Dallas Mavericks found themselves in the hot seat because a woman decided to come forward with verbal and sexual harassment allegations against former President and CEO Terdema Ussery.
Allegedly, Ussery took a seat near the woman, while she was eating lunch, and proceeded to grope and tell her she would not go to the movies, because she was rather going to be “gang banged.”
This woman wasn’t the only one that had been harassed. Ussery grew quite the reputation in Dallas – he would say and commit sexual acts with other women who covered or worked with the team.
According to the Daily News, various women came forward and alerted human resources and their supervisors, but nothing ever came from it. Ussery walked away from the Mavericks organization in 2015 without consequences for his actions. His acts came to light just this year.
Recently the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was allegedly involved in a scandal of his own when an Oregon woman accused Mark Cuban of putting his hand in her pants while taking a photo in 2011.
“You don’t feel safe going to work, and it’s not long before you look for another job,” an unidentified woman told Sports Illustrated. “And then you wonder why there aren’t more women working in sports.”
I'm a junior at Lakeview Centennial High school and this is my first year on the newspaper and yearbook staff.