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Last summer Hope Solo got busted on domestic-violence charges involving a drunken encounter with her half-sister and nephew.
Between then and now we'd gotten sporadic updates on what had happened that night, but nothing nearly as extensive as a report from ESPN's investigative series "Outside the Lines."
The report uses police records, interviews, sworn depositions, and "other documents" to paint a terrible picture of a woman who will just so happen to be tending goal Monday against Australia.
First the report details how Solo's aforementioned half-sister (Teresa Obert) was motivated to give her and her son's side of the story because Solo had been using her fame to wage a publicity tour on outlets such as "Good Morning America" and ESPN's own espnW, painting herself as the victim rather than the aggressor:
Obert's son, who recently turned 18 but whom ESPN is not naming because he was a minor at the time of the incident, declined to be interviewed by Outside the Lines. He's big, 6-foot-8, 270 pounds, and Solo, who is 5-foot-9, 150 pounds, invoked her nephew's size to make her case to GMA — something she would state again to espnW.
"I'm not going to go into all of the details, uh, but it was a scary night," Solo said to GMA. "I was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of my 17-year-old nephew, who is 6-foot-9, 280 pounds. I was struck over the head, and concussed pretty severely. It was a very scary night."
Obert says she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"I felt like I had just been kicked in the head," she says. "She should have been happy, but then, randomly, she goes on 'Good Morning America' and lies. I was very upset. It never had anything to do with size. She has tried to make him feel small his whole life. He's not aggressive. She's a trained athlete. She's strong."
Obert instead decided to describe in detail how Solo allegedly grabbed her son and smashed his head into the concrete of their garage floor:
Instead, Solo followed him into the home's converted garage, where the teenager then yelled for his mother, prompting Solo to call him a "pussy" and a "mama's boy" (…) He then told Solo, "You'll never know what it's like to be a mother, because even if you did have children, they would have the most unhappy childhoods because you have no compassion." He told police Solo lunged at him to "take a swing," hitting him lightly in the face. He said she charged and struck him multiple times. Obert, who had come into the room, said in her deposition and in an interview with Outside the Lines that her son briefly subdued Solo and she seemed to calm down. Obert told the teenager to let his aunt up off the ground. "She's done," Obert recalled telling her son, according to her deposition. He didn't believe his mom, but she said, "No, she's done. You can let go, she's done."
But when Obert's son let Solo go, he told police she "immediately grabbed his hair, pulled his head down and started punching him in the face repeatedly." Later, in the deposition, he said Solo "jumped on top of me and started bashing my head into the cement" inside the garage.
"She grabbed him by the head and she kept slamming him into the cement over and over again," Obert told Outside the Lines. "So I came from behind her, and I pulled her over and, you know, to get her off my son. And then, once she got off, she started punching me in the face over and over again."
After the police arrived they arrested Solo and immediately noted that she reeked of alcohol. She was held in detention at the station for two days where she remained hostile:
Over the next few hours, Cpl. Robert Russell was among those who processed Solo. In his report, Russell wrote that as Solo arrived at the Kirkland jail, "I could hear the arrestee yelling profanities inside the patrol vehicle." As he escorted her to jail, he observed that "she showed signs of being intoxicated. Her eyes were bloodshot, speech was slurred, lack of good coordination, and the smell of intoxicants coming from her breath were present."
Solo was repeatedly insulting Russell and Goguen, according to the report, and it was Goguen whom she informed that her necklace was worth more than he made in a year. As Russell was fingerprinting Solo, she "made numerous statements that I was not worth anything, and should be proud to have such authority."
Solo continued with her insults of Goguen and Russell "to incite some reaction" and then turned her attention to the jail staff. As she was being told to walk to the search area, Solo pulled away from an officer, leading her to be taken to a holding cell. There, Russell wrote, "officers took [Solo] to the ground to gain her compliance." It was at this point, Russell wrote, that Solo told one of the officers that if she weren't in handcuffs, "I'd kick your ass."
The case was dismissed in January (prompting Solo to parade her "victim" narrative). When asked what US soccer did about the situation, Solo's sister said she didn't have the slightest clue, adding that they interviewed neither her nor her son.
As we said earlier, Solo will be starting Monday night (barring a last-minute change of heart). Rooting for her may be kind of tough.
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