Jerramy Stevens, the husband of US women’s national team goalkeeper Hope Solo, has revealed that he is enraged by the nature — and timing — of the recent coverage of his wife’s ongoing legal saga.
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Stevens, a former NFL player and the driver of the U.S. Soccer van the night he and Solo were busted for drunk driving, gave an interview this weekend to USA Today Sports in which he called last week’s detailed report by ESPN’s Outside The Lines a “with hunt,” “unpatriotic” and “low class.”
Stevens, on the coverage of Solo, from USA Today Sports:“It is a witch hunt, you can put that in the paper.”
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“It’s not hard for me because I know Hope can handle it. I think that what’s hard is that she’s the victim of something that was really scary and a really unfortunate incident. (She) being classified even remotely close to Ray Rice and these other domestic violence incidents is ridiculous and outright wrong.
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“I feel she’ll continue to (play well). She doesn’t need to defend herself. She’s in the right. I think that gives her strength because she doesn’t feel like she’s done anything wrong and it’s just unfortunate because they’ve made an issue out of something and there was no new information presented. None whatsoever. All of those (details) were available.
"(People) put females in a box and want them to stay there and look pretty. Hope refuses to be put in that box. She wants to be treated as an equal. That’s not the case as we can see.”
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“Nothing less than unpatriotic. Low class, low class. It was super intentional. I don’t know what their issue is personally with Hope, but it definitely feels like they have one.”
On Friday, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati responded to a letter written by US Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) urging U.S. Soccer to further investigate the domestic violence charges against Solo, which stem from last summer’s highly disputed altercation with her half-sister and 17-year-old nephew.
Stevens and Solo maintain that the USWNT ‘keeper is “perfectly focused,” as she claimed to be following the Americans’ first Women’s World Cup game against Australia. The couple has been married since November 2012. They were married a day after Stevens was arrested for domestic violence assault following an altercation in which Solo was injured.
