It was somewhat laughable on Wednesday when TMZ reported that Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor plans to defend himself against statutory rape charges by claiming that he did not have sex with the 16-year-old prostitute who came to his hotel room, and that he instead merely, um, yielded his domain.
But now the “I did not have sex with that woman” defense has moved to a new level, due to an account that the girl told a friend that she didn’t have sex with Taylor.
“She starts explaining that it was weird because she didn’t even have sex,” an unnamed source tells the New York Daily News. (It’s unclear whether the source is the friend, or a friend of the friend.) “When she got back in the car, she wasn’t mad or anything like that. She was like, ‘Wow’ -- she got paid $300 and didn’t have to have sex with him.”
Sorry, but we’re not buying it. It smells to us like an effort to manufacture “reasonable doubt,” in the hopes of securing an acquittal at trial or, even better, a decision not to prosecute Taylor on felony charges.
Let’s consider what we knew before L.T.'s camp had a weekend to retreat to the drawing board. First, the girl was sufficiently traumatized after the experience to send an S.O.S. via text message to her uncle, who then called police. This conflicts with the idea that she “didn’t have to have sex” with Taylor. Second, lawyer Arthur Aidala told Mike Francesa of WFAN on Friday that "[t]he evidence is gonna show that there was some contact between the two and that they did not have sex,” and Aidala explained that by “sex” he meant intercourse.
Third, Taylor gave a statement to authorities after he was arrested, before he was charged with having sex with a minor under the age of 17. Aidala said on Friday that he had not yet seen the statement, that he expected to get it this week, and that he planned to attack every aspect of its content and collection. It’s now Thursday, and nothing about the content of the statement has been reported or leaked. Thus, it’s possible that Aidala has received the statement, that he doesn’t like what it says, and that he’s doing everything he can to come up with an explanation or an excuse that meshes with the theory that L.T. paid $300 to not have sex with the girl he reportedly thought was 19.