NBA star-player Derrick Rose testified in his civil rape trial that the NBA taught him how to dispose of used condoms in special sex classes as part of the “Rookie Transition Program.”
Rose was explaining why after a sexual encounter with the plaintiff — known only as Jane Doe — he wrapped the used condom up and put it in his pocket to take home. Rose said that that was “kind of normal with my profession” and that the NBA taught him to “make sure you get the condom if you can’t flush it.”
Rose did not state why players are instructed to take their used condoms, but Deadspin reports that the usual explanation is that it prevents women from using athletes’ semen to impregnate themselves. At the trial, Rose said, “You never know what women are up to nowadays.”
Rose, who became famous as a point guard for the Chicago Bulls and is now with the New York Knicks, is on trial for raping the plaintiff at her apartment along with two other men, Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton, in the summer of 2013.
Doe has said that she barely remembers the encounter and was too drunk to consent, but all three deny the charges. Rose has claimed, in part, that the encounter was consensual, because their previous sexual interactions had been consensual.
Rose also said that Doe never said no or seemed to want to stop, telling the men that she would take them “one at a time.”
“If someone says come in one at a time and you are a guy,” he explained at trial, “then what is that?”
He also testified that he didn’t respond to Doe’s text messages the day after the alleged rape because he “thought she was going to claim rape” and “it turned out to be what I thought.”
While testifying Rose referred to the night in question as a “typical night in L.A.”
The condom revelation came during a tense day in the courtroom.
At one point, Rose lashed out at Doe’s lawyer, telling him, “Don’t talk about my mom like that, bro,” when the attorney made disparaging comments about the manners that Rose’s mother gave him.
At another, when pressed over why he didn’t remember how long each man had spent with Doe, Rose retorted, “I’m not gay.”
Rose was also questioned over how he knew that a vibrator the plaintiff used was pink, because Rose is colorblind.
“There’s different kinds of color blind,” he explained to the court. “I know pink when I see it.”
Later U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald scolded Waukeen McCoy, Jane Doe’s lawyer, for withholding three text messages in which Doe requests payment for a cab ride and a “sex belt” from Rose and said that he was considering a mistrial.
When the trial recessed and Judge Fitzgerald left the courtroom, M.L. Nestel, a reporter for the Daily Beast, stayed behind and witnessed the two attorneys get into an altercation that found McCoy telling Rose’s attorney to “take a chill pill.” Federal court officers were called and stayed in the courtroom for the rest of the day.
