Written by Travis M. Andrews at Washington Post.com
In 2010, Darren Sharper was a hero.
As he closed out his NFL career, he played safety for the New Orleans Saints that year, the only season in which the team ever made it to the Super Bowl. Previously he had played for the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings and, in college, for William & Mary.
To many in New Orleans, that Super Bowl was a healing of sorts following Hurricane Katrina’s decimation of the city. As The Washington Post wrote, “Around here, people feel like they need the Saints to win the Super Bowl.”
The Saints won with a last-minute pick-six from Tracy Porter that made grown men cry and a city erupt with dancing and jubilation, joy after so much heartbreak.
Behind Porter ran Sharper with his hand in the air, index finger pointed upward in the classic “We’re No. 1″ gesture.
After that game, New Orleans built a 121,000 square-foot, open-air plaza outside the Superdome celebrating the victory. Fittingly called Champion’s Square, it prominently featured a two-story-high image of Porter and Sharper in their victory run.
Fans excitedly cheered him when he later became an NFL analyst. While known for being a ladies’ man, he seemed like a dedicated father — a photo of him with an arm wrapped around his daughter appeared in “NFL Dads Dedicated to Daughters,” a book created by the NFL and A Call to Men, a national organization dedicated to raising awareness of domestic and sexual violence.
In it, Sharper wrote, “My daughter makes me mindful of how women are treated: undervalued and exploited. Which is why I feel compelled to take advantage of this opportunity to speak up about domestic violence.”
But in the shadows he was the exact opposite of what he preached. He was a serial rapist destroying women’s lives.
And Thursday in New Orleans, U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo sentenced Sharper to 18 years in prison for drugging at least nine women across four states in order to rape them, all crimes to which he either pleaded guilty or no contest.
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