14 DAY TRIAL // Last June, US women’s soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo made headlines again for something not related to her achievements in sport, when she was arrested after a family party turned violent and she allegedly attacked her 17-year-old nephew and his mother.
In her first interview on the topic, with GMA’s Robin Roberts, Solo says that she was the real victim in the attack, because the boy attacked her - and not the other way around.
“I was a victim of domestic violence”
The police report filed at the time had several eyewitnesses go on the record saying that she became aggressive towards her sister, which is when her nephew stepped in to calm her down. Solo appeared “intoxicated and upset” when police arrived, and her sister and nephew displayed injuries they claimed had been inflicted by her in a drunken rage.
Later reports argued that, while Solo did hit her sister first, she hit her nephew in self-defense when he started waving a gun around, in what was believed to be an attempt to help calm things down.
Solo was arrested on the spot, but all charges were later dropped. Now that the case is closed, she can have her side of the story out there, which is where the GMA interview comes in handy.
“It's still very difficult for me to talk about,” she tells Roberts (video is available at the link in the second paragraph). “I'm not going to go into all the details. I was a victim of domestic violence, at the hands of my 17-year-old nephew. He struck me over the head and I was concussed pretty severely. It was a very scary night.”
Family begs to differ
Hope Solo leaves no room for doubt as to what she considers her share of responsibility in the incident: she has none, because she was attacked and then made to look like the bad guy. She is a victim and she did nothing wrong.
Not so fast, her sister and nephew say in a statement to the ABC! Hope was the attacker and the fact that her nephew is a big young man doesn’t mean he’s the abuser, as she tries to make it sound.
However, the family doesn’t say how come the charges were dropped if she was guilty.
“I wasn’t thinking”
The June 2014 arrest isn’t the only incident that Hope has to do some explaining for: last month, her husband, former NFL player Jerramy Stevens, was arrested on suspicion of DUI. He was driving a US Soccer team van and she was there with him, riding shotgun.
This got Solo a suspension from the team, and she’s working hard now to convince her bosses and the world that she’s learned her lesson: we should have taken a cab, she tells Robin Roberts fighting back tears.
Stevens and Solo have a checkered history and equally flammable tempers: they were also arrested in 2012 for a domestic disturbance and he was charged with domestic abuse. She didn’t want to press charges and married him a few days after he was released from jail.
That’s all water under the bridge, she insists. She’s getting help for her anger problem and can now say she’s in a “good place.” It’s not “perfect” yet, but she’s getting there.