I've got some thoughts on this, but been a bit tied up.
First off, I've got some personal exposure to these processes. I was on the grand jury for 2 years and I also defended cases like these, not just alleged CSC, but CSC in a resort town where neither the victim or suspects were residents of the state, let alone the county.
In regards to the alleged incident. I don't find anything credible on its face without something to corroborate it. That's not a shaded bias against the victim or defendant, but more a quest for what is likely to be proven in court. So victim says "X", what else do you have to corroborate to prove that? Same goes for defendant's, you've got an alibi, let me talk to who can place you somewhere else, and then lets hope you've got a cc receipt or something. So I don't really want to debate facts where we have zero evidence to corroborate anything, and I'm certainly not passing judgement on what may or may not be true, or taking sides. I just think its worthless to discuss credibility and what might be true.
From an indictment standpoint, the old "ham sandwich" saying was pretty much true in my experience. In our jurisdiction, we had 18 assembled, 12 votes needed to indict, and some days we only had 12 people show up. Our county didn't continue that day, we just did it with 12, which gave me immense power BTW. (Side story, Dan Dantoni, Marshall coach and brother of Mike, owes me a few years of his life, his case showed up the day we had 12 and I voted no, but that's a story for another day). Our process was simple, our county has 4-5 incorporated cities with their own government, and unincorporated areas. So each jurisdiction would send the lowest member of the staff totem pole and that cop would read the arrest warrant for every pending case. We saw the prosecutor for 5 minutes in the morning, that was it. We didn't even vote on a single case. If Myrtle Beach had 70 cases, he'd read them all, and we'd vote for all 70 at once. I didn't like that and after a few months, if something seemed shady, I'd step in and ask them to pull that one out and we'd vote on it separately, but it was still a joke for the most part. It was also like pulling teeth to get the other 17 to allow me to single out one case for discussion. Other things made it a joke, one town would send a cop that could barely read, so imagine how focused we were on facts when the guy could barely read a full sentence.
The only time we didn't follow that process is if it was some corruption case with local officials. That required state LE to investigate and when they showed up that investigator would at least give us an overview from a detailed report. It was much more involved evidence, but those were one off situations.
I would hope there are other jurisdictions doing better work, but I'd bet a bunch of them have a similar rubber stamp process. Zero evidence is presented, no witnesses, no prosecutor, just a cop reading the arrest warrant. It was a joke.
As for crimes like this where the victim and defendant's are not residents. Cases like these aren't treated with the same priority as if all parties live in that county. Shouldn't be that way, but in reality there is something to out of sight out of mind in regards to this. Much easier for a prosecutor to dispose of it in a way that gets it off her list rather than what is right. Is it possible a prosecutor looked at the evidence and flat told the victim she was in for a rough process where he/she may not have if the victim was local? Sure. If there was even one or two facts off, then a prosecutor could easily explain its a tough case to try, you're going to have to travel here 2-3 times, miss work, be available when the court schedules this, and undergo 2 different sets of attorneys picking your story apart. That they'd be glad to take it to court, but that's what your facing, etc. So in reality it could be a strong case and just didn't get the prosecutors energy it should have. Or it could have been a really bad case and she was flat out told it was a bad case. Hard to say, but her not living there clearly was a factor. I guarantee if the prosecutor had to run it by the DA before he/she moved to dismiss it, the words "the victim and defendants don't live here and will never come back" came out of his or her mouth.
As for Patricia, he came out strong in his statement. Which means one of two things. One, he knows the case better than anyone and by stating his innocence so strong he's not worried one bit about the victim coming at him with her version at this point. I know he was in a position where he had to say something, but he didn't hide behind generic soft stuff, he came out strong and I think that is unlikely if this could possibly bite him in the ass at this point. There isn't a statute of limitations, so he has to know the danger of awaking a sleeping dog. So TWO, if he did that, he's an idiot. Since I don't think he's an idiot, I'm guessing facts are on his side in this if the details ever come to light.
As for the NFL aspect, I really don't like to speculate. I was hopeful that facts and reasonable thoughts would govern past discipline situations. I'm done speculating on things that originate at that level.
