Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane has seen the reports suggesting that he will escape criminal charges in the sexual assault investigation, spurred by the accusations of a woman he met at a downtown Buffalo nightclub and subsequently returned to his Hamburg, NY home with, this summer, and he doesn't know what to make of them.
"Those are just reports, and not really any facts or anything so far," Kane said recently, via Mark Lazerus of the Chicago Sun Times. "So for me to comment on that would be going against what we've been doing the whole time, so I'm not really going to say much about it until the district attorney addresses everything and he make his decision."
The alleged victim fingered Kane as her rapist on Aug. 2, telling Hamburg police that she met Kane at Buffalo bar, the pair, along with others, went back to Kane's lakefront home, where, at some point in the evening, she found herself alone in a room adjacent to the rest of the guests. Per reports, she told police that Kane followed her into the room and subsequently raped her.
Only the case has seemingly begun to unravel in recent weeks thanks to a variety of factors. The accuser's mother told Thomas Eoannou, the alleged victim's attorney at the time, that a rape kit bag, which once held the results of her daughter's rape kit test, had been delivered to her home by an anonymous person. Eoannou held a hasty press conference and decried the investigation amid possible evidence tampering.
The very next day, Eoannou withdrew from the case, suggesting that the alleged victim's mother lied to him about how the bag came into her possession. Frank Sedita, the Erie County district attorney, referred to the entire episode as an "elaborate hoax."
It was reported shortly thereafter by The Buffalo News that the results of the actual rape kit, still in possession of the police, showed no signs of Kane's DNA in any area of the woman's body or clothing that would suggest a sexual assault occurred.
Kane, speaking to Lazerus on Sunday, said that his lawyer, Paul J. Cambria, has given him no indication that a resolution to the case is near.
"He says he doesn't really know, either," Kane told Lazerus. "I think there's been a lot of reports, a lot of things that have been said that have been wrong, and a lot of things that have been said that maybe have been accurate, too. But we've kind of stayed even keel the whole time and not really saying much and just kind of leaving it to the facts and what actually happens, instead of going off sources and different reports."
Despite the gargantuan off-ice distraction, through 11 games of the 2015-16 NHL season, Kane leads the Blackhawks with 14 points. He indicated to Lazerus that, though there may be no immediate end in sight, his focus has and will remain on the game and helping his Chicago teammates.
