Jose Canseco’s tweets about an impending rape charge are drawing controversy, but the slugger isn’t backing down in his defense.
A few days after the former MLB star tweeted about what he believed was a false allegation of rape, Canseco said he is setting up a polygraph test to prove his innocence. In tweets sent on Thursday morning, Canseco said he planned to take one test for police and another public test in an attempt to prove that he didn’t rape the woman who is allegedly accusing him.
He tweeted: “Ok setting up 2 polygraph exams about the sexual assault case one with the media and one with the police on the 5 of june.[name redacted] polygraph?”
As he maintains his defense, Canseco is facing a backlash from people angry at his transparent attempt to shame a potential rape victim.
The incident started on Saturday when the former baseball star tweeted that a woman was falsely accusing him of rape. Using the woman’s full name and sharing a picture of her in a bikini, Canseco laid out a vigorous defense to the allegation that he raped her .
Canseco tweeted: “Breaking news. This is a first folks. Las Vegas police was just at my house and I have been charged with rape by (a woman) from Las Vegas.”
In another tweet, Canseco mentioned that the woman accused him of drugging her, and invited her to take a polygraph test.
Canseco tweeted : “(She) told police that I drugged her and then raped her. Hmmmmm. Lets find out what really happened.”
Canseco tweeted the woman’s phone number and the location of her gym on Twitter. Those tweets have all been removed, but Canseco denies that he was the one who did it.
“For the record I do not delete tweets,” he wrote. “I have nothing to hide. The truth always comes out.”
No arrest has been made, and Las Vegas police wouldn’t say whether the alleged attack took place.
Canseco is no stranger to controversy. The former MLB rookie of the year wrote a tell-all book about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, also accusing several other players of using as well. Canseco also declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy last year in Las Vegas, reporting less than $21,000 in assets and close to $1.7 million in liabilities. He also revealed he owed close to $500,000 to the IRS.
Since Canseco made the tweets about the rape charge, he has faced an angry backlash on Twitter.
Atlantic Wire reporter Alexander Abad-Santos, who compared Canseco’s public shaming to the Steubenville rape case, noted that the former baseball player also broke several rules on Twitter.
He wrote: “While Canseco might have violated the laws of human decency and broke new ground — in notoriety and absurdity — in taunting an alleged assault victim, he may have only broken a few of Twitter’s rules. Indeed, Twitter is as notoriously defensive of free speech as it is quick to suspend verified accounts with thousands of followers that, say, temporarily crash the stock market .”
Even though Canseco’s tweets about the rape charge were deleted, he hasn’t backed down in naming his alleged victim. He re-tweeted her name twice again on Thursday morning, neither of which had been deleted.