That schoolyard chant we all learned turned out to be untrue. Yes, stick and stones may hurt our bones but names, bad names, can always hurt us.
Rapist, convicted rapist, ex-felon. These are names and labels that can hurt just as rape hurts a victim physically and mentally.
How about “Rape Beast” as a national newspaper in the UK refers to him now?
Iron Mike Tyson, now peddling his 88-minute documentary to the public, blasted ?rape victim? Desiree Washington as ?that wretched swine of a woman? according to popular British tabloid The Daily Star.
The solely from Tyson’s viewpoint DVD, produced by James Toback, goes on sale next week and the ex-champ isn?t hurting sales by fanning the flames with such incendiary comments.
Tyson, who I first met when he was a 16-year-old ring prodigy in Catskill under the aegis of ?White Father? and crazed genius Cus D?Amato, steadfastly maintains he never raped Washington, the Miss Rhode Island entrant in a black beauty pageant held in Indianapolis.
But, with his lawyer, Vincent Fuller, foolishly using a ?she knew Tyson was a beastly creature? defense, a jury convicted Tyson of raping her in a hotel room. He went to prison in 1992 and was never really the same person or premier fighter. Coming out of jail for what he said then and says now was a bum rap, Tyson?s boxing career unraveled.
If anything it was Fuller?s weak defense (the same attorney who convinced a Washington jury 11 years prior that Ronald Reagan shooter John Hinckley Jr. was legally insane) and Tyson?s past escapades, real and imagined, which convicted him. Fuller made Washington out to be a scheming, “golddigger” but the jury wasn’t buying that about a teenaged witness who used terms like “neat” and “yucky” under oath.
?I like to hurt women when I make love to then,? Tyson was quoted as saying by Jose Torres in his book (?Fire & Fear?). I like to hear them scream with pain, to see them bleed.?
I am convinced that Tyson never said that for two reasons. One, he?s not that stupid. Two, ex-light heavyweight champion Torres, who died recently, was originally penning a bubble gum portrait of the story of D?Amato and Tyson, said to be an authorized ?as told to? biography. But, when Ruth Roper, mother of actress Robin Givens and Tyson?s mother-in-law, sicced a lawyer on Torres and his publisher, the fighter-writer flipped his script and produced a Tyson-bashing tome. His choice was to conjure up something juicy or give back the cash advance from Warner Books.
Tyson?s conviction and prison stint are a matter of record. But what really transpired in Room 606 at the Canterbury Hotel? All we have to go on is she said, he said and the jury said.
Now, I can reveal what the guy who selected lawyer Fuller for Tyson, promoter Don King said in a private conversation.
Flashback: I stood in the ring with my then-boss Don King the 1997 night when Tyson became the maddest and saddest (not the baddest) man on the planet. Hey DK, I said sotto voce, be careful not to step on that slice of Mr. Holyfield?s ear.
I was King’s VP of public relations. I wanted to fill the same role for Mother Teresa but never got a call back from Calcutta.
Even, while in the midst of total chaos as Tyson turned cannibal in the ring, I was wondering what paymaster King, totally streetwise and a keen student of what he mistakenly refers to as “Jewish prudence,” really thought about the incident in Indy.
I mean, what King thought other than about the financial hits he took with his cash cow penned up in prison.
Tyson, like the vast majority of ex-felons, maintains his innocence.
?When I was falsely accused of raping that wretched swine of a woman Desiree Washington, it was the most horrible time of my life.
?It was the most heinous day of my life because going to prison I lost my humanity, I lost my reputation and everything I worked so hard for.
?I?ve done no such thing as take that woman?s chastity at all.
?I have to be honest ? I?m a jerk sometimes and I say some things that are crass and coarse ? but I would never do nothing to that extent.
?I may have taken advantage of a woman before, but I have never taken advantage of her.
?I don?t know what to say about that situation. It just basically took the life out of me. I never again trusted anybody.?
This, of course, is Tyson speaking in the friendly confines of the Toback tapes and not on cross-examination in front of a jury.
One day while Tyson was incarcerated, King and I were flying from Newark to Fort Lauderdale and King did not get his usual first class seat. He was back in ?steerage? with me and the other unwashed commoners.
The in-flight movie was the brilliant ?Shawshank Redemption,? a gripping story of a longtime jailbird who couldn?t cope when he became free.
Having served four years for manslaughter in Ohio and surviving that to become the most famous boxing promoter ever, I thought King could give a sharp review of the flick.
?Oh, man, that was some real shit, that was accurate,? King told me across the aisle. ?Some guys get so indoctrinated to the prison regimen they can?t cope on the outside without it.?
He seemed to be relaxed so I asked King if he thought Tyson had raped Washington or had just had his sexual way with her and then acted like a roughneck, a cad.
Did Mike rape her or not?
?Who knows? King said. ?Only two people know because there weren?t any other witnesses in that hotel room.?
Then King laughed his booming, trademark ?Only In America? laugh.
Tyson, who came to Indiana for the Black Expo as a special guest, had a bodyguard go from his gold limousine to the hotel room with he and the 18-year-old Washington. But the bodyguard never testified at trial.
It?s no laughing matter for Tyson and never will be.
His obit will call him a champion and a convicted rapist.
Tyson, the 12-year-old, oversized mugger from the mean streets of Brownsville (?Never Ran, Never Will?), Brooklyn, was never what you might call innocent. He never had a chance to be.
I, for one, think Tyson was not guilty in Indiana. He was guilty of rudeness, bad manners and all that.
In a confidential settlement, Washington received $1 million. Her lawyer was Deval Patrick, now the governor of Massachusetts. No amount of money can make up for a vicious sexual assault, for a man not stopping when a woman says ?no.?
A smooth operator with females? No, Tyson, youngest heavyweight champ and highest paid athlete in the world at one point, never had those skills.
Call him vile, crude and someone whose ?bedside manner? was sadly lacking.
But I don?t believe he raped that woman.
