Asking Barstool Sports to discuss a domestic violence case has roughly a 99.9999 percent chance of ending in something regrettable. Assigning it to the guy whose main responsibility is determining which accused child molesters are hot? Well, uh—Jerry Thornton gave it a try anyway when Reuben Foster’s ex-girlfriend Elissa Ennis, under oath, walked back her domestic violence allegations against the former 49ers linebacker.
Ennis’s original claim in the police report was that Foster had dragged her by the hair, ruptured her eardrum, thrown her dog, and broken two of her phones. Here’s what Thornton wrote after she recanted:
And it should be noted that gun charges against Foster were also dropped because he is licensed to carry so his gun is about as illegal as the gas grill I just bought. In other words, Reuben Foster had to see his name smeared all over the place by people like me (though way less talented than me, obviously), no matter how many qualifiers like “if true” and “assuming he did do it”s were peppered in their to cover our asses. When the truth is he didn’t go anything wrong.
Which is more than we can say about Elissa Ennis. Who not only committed the felony of lying in a police report, she told one of the worst lies you possibly can: Accusing a guy of beating the bag out of a woman. Plus just think of what it does to actual victims of actual DV and how much harder it is for them to believed when fake victims lie through their fucking teeth just to make a fast buck and out of jealously. And by Ennis’s own admission, she’s a serial offender. So this is a serious, serious matter. And ought to be treated as such by the law enforcement who’s job is tough enough without having to sift through made up fairy tales. Right? Wrong.
Oh well. I guess that settles that. Elissa Ennis isn’t someone who destroyed a man’s reputation – maybe permanently – with lies. Again. She’s a domestic violence victim who falsely recanted. So they believed her the first time, but say that she’s now lying when she says she lied the first time. So they’re saying Foster is guilty even though the charges have been dropped. At the request of his non-victim. And instead of prosecuting her on behalf of real, honest, truthful victims everywhere, they’re offering her empathy, support and advocacy. Got it.
My question is, does this extend to all false reports to the Santa Clara DAs? I mean, if I tell them Jimmy Garoppolo broke into my house and stole some cash and jewelry, do I get empathy? If I slam my car into a telephone pole but report a hit & run with Carlos Hyde as the driver, will they support me? If I say Carlos Hyde robbed me at gun point, how much can I count on them to advocate for me? Especially after being a convicted serial liar. I’m guessing not much.
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That’s the kind of chest-puffing to be expected from a numpty who’s dying to play cop. If Thornton filed this take at any place that wasn’t Barstool, his editor would do the merciful thing and put him out to pasture. (Well, maybe not WEEI, where he got away with this ancient nonsense about how jerking off to Phoebe Cates stopped him from caring about advanced baseball stats.)
Foster was arrested again last Saturday at a hotel in Tampa the night before the 49ers were set to play the Bucs. According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the linebacker got into an altercation with Ennis, allegedly hitting her in the face and slapping her phone out of her hand. (Police also came to Foster’s Santa Clara apartment in October for a domestic disturbance involving him and Ennis, but no one was arrested.) The 49ers cut Foster early Sunday morning, although the Skins claimed him on waivers Tuesday and are now poorly defending their decision. Here’s what Thornton wrote about the second arrest:
I don’t know what actually happened all these times. You don’t know. Nobody does. That’s for a judge or jury to decide and even they will just be taking an educated guess. She either lied about him hitting her or lied about lying about it or he scared her into lying about lying about him hitting her. No one can say except them. Like I said, shitshow. All we do know is the Niners couldn’t be more justified for parting ways with this guy because he’s taken every inch of slack they’ve cut him and choked the organization with it. When because of him you can’t get your “NUMBER OF DAYS THIS WORKPLACE HAS GONE WITHOUT AN EMPLOYEE GETTING CHARGED WITH SLAPPING HIS GIRLFRIEND IN THE FACE” sign up to “30,” he’s used up the last drop of goodwill that comes from being a 1st round pick.
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At no point did Thornton mention that he had wanted Ennis to face criminal charges. Instead, he bleached his article from May. (Today, it’s back up. Thornton didn’t explain why.) When asked yesterday why the post had disappeared from the website, CEO Erika Nardini, who talked big shit in September about how Barstool Sports doesn’t delete its history, directed all questions to Thornton, who then wrote a flop-sweaty defense of why he deleted the post. Somewhere in it was this sentence, which I actually can’t parse:
So I took down the post. And in doing so, underestimated the desperation of Deadspin to run a colonoscopy camera up Barstool’s collective ass in search of a six month old post hoping to find some shred of misogyny. Knowing full well that if I took Ennis’ side, they would’ve spun it into a racist attack on Foster.
For the record, Jerry, a reader emailed it to us because they thought it was bad that you were trying to cover your ass. Clearly something about it didn’t sit well with you, either!
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