“The Hunting Ground” is a documentary about rape cases that take place on college campuses. A 10-minute part of the documentary is about Erica Kinsman and her accusation that Florida State’s former quarterback, Jameis Winston, raped her.
Kinsman could have hidden and been anonymous for the documentary, but she chose to waive her right. Her and her father John tell her story in the 10-minute portion of the film that is about her accusation. The film says that FSU officials declined interviews.
She begins by telling about how she met Jameis. She was at a bar one night, and a man was following her around, and she told him to stop. Winston seemed to notice that she was upset, and he went up to the man and told him to stop, saying that Kinsman was his girlfriend. After the man left, Jameis asked Erica if she wanted to take a shot of alcohol with him.
Erica says that she accepted the shot. She briefly looked away to make sure that the guy was gone, and when she turned around, Jameis handed her the shot.
Erica said that she was, “fairly certain that there was something in that drink.” Erica had been drunk before, and she knew that she had not drank nearly enough to become drunk and incompetent that night. She also said that she would not go home with a guy, and she definitely wouldn’t get in a cab with three people she didn’t know.
The cab took Kinsman, Winston, and two of Winston’s friends to Winston’s apartment, and Erica says he raped her there.
“He was on top of me and I couldn’t really breathe that much, but I was saying ‘Please stop, stop.’ I remember his roommate or whoever this other guy was came in and he was saying like, ‘Dude stop, what are you doing? She told you to stop.’
Since his door to the bedroom wouldn’t lock, he picked me up and carried me into the bathroom. He said ‘The door will lock in here.’ He put me on the tile bathroom floor. I was trying to push him off and kick him off, but he was just too big. I said, ‘please stop,’ multiple times and I said, ‘no.’ Eventually he pushed his hand over my face and pushed my face into the floor, and he just continued to rape me,” she said.
The film goes on to criticize the Tallahassee PD for not doing anything with the case for 10 months even when Erica kept contacting them. It also shows a clip from ESPN’s “First Take” where hosts Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith defend Winston, calling the claims “terribly unfair” because they came out during FSU’s National Championship run.
Erica did not know that Jameis Winston was a FSU QB until a few months after he raped her.
Winston maintained his innocence throughout the entire process, and he was never criminally charged. He also did not go against any rules in the FSU student code of conduct, the school found. Jameis has admitted that he had sex with Erica, but he claims that it was consensual, when it clearly seems like it was not (judging from Erica’s story and the fact that she had bruises on her body while she was at the hospital that night).
Jameis Winston said that he was going to sue CNN for airing “The Hunting Ground” on Sunday, stating that the film is “deeply-flawed” and saying that the producers “consciously and intentionally failed to adhere to any accepted journalistic standards.”
FSU President John Thrasher wrote a letter about the documentary, stating that the documentary is “one-sided” and calling saying that it is not journalistic. He did not want to be a part of the documentary because he did not want to make it look like CNN was being fair when it was not.
“We wanted no part in making CNN look like it was being fair while allowing the network to kick the can of journalistic integrity down the road.”
An FSU official, who was once the head of the office that counsels campus rape victims, said in a deposition that 20 football players had allegations of sexual assaults over the past 9 years, and the players get a special treatment in rape cases, according to the Associated Press. In the case of Erica and Jameis Winston, it seems like Jameis may have received that special treatment for football players.
You can find out more information on the film here on the ‘The Hunting Ground’ Facebook page.
