Gabe Kapler’s time with the Dodgers could spell his end as Phillies manager.
Kapler, as LA’s director of player development in 2015, is at the center of a scandal, in which the current Phillies manager has been cited as shielding and mishandling the details of multiple sexual assaults committed by players in the Dodgers organization from authorities, and the team, according to multiple reports surfacing this week.
In February 2015, Kapler was informed by a 17-year-old girl — and her grandmother — that she was assaulted by a pair of women, while two of the franchise’s minor leaguers filmed the incident in a Dodgers spring training hotel room, in Glendale, Ariz. Instead of contacting police, Kapler attempted to arrange a dinner between the girl and the players.
“The sole purpose was to provide the opportunity for the victim to receive an apology in a controlled environment with supervision, and to educate the players on how to be accountable,” Kapler wrote in his personal blog this week. “The question of why I didn’t report this to the police is a fair one. Admittedly, there were many thoughts going through my mind at the time. But above all, the victim’s grandmother asked for my reassurance that I wouldn’t ‘turn [the victim] in’ before the victim would share what had happened….My feeling at the time was that the victim should have the right to make the decision about what she wanted to do. Perhaps I should have taken it out of her hands, but my intention was to respect the victim and her wishes.”
The dinner didn’t happen. But roughly one week later, the alleged victim — she did not press charges — was arrested for shoplifting and shared her account of what happened with police, which included being sexually assaulted by one of the players.
Kapler told the Washington Post he wasn’t aware of the alleged sexual assault before last month, but he had been made aware of two later incidents at the same hotel. One involved a Dodgers minor leaguer being accused of committing an act of sexual violence against a woman on the housekeeping staff that October. The following spring, a group of players were filmed on surveillance video “stalking … and behaving strangely” toward female guests, according to a Sports Illustrated source. Kapler reportedly spoke with the hotel manager after the alleged assault in October, but MLB only learned of these incidents when since-terminated team employee Nick Francona — who had worked under Kapler — informed it. In August 2015, MLB and the MLBPA created a policy requiring teams to inform the league of any potential acts of domestic violence or sexual assault.
Kapler told the Washington Post that his actions complied with Dodgers human resources guidelines. A team lawyer told the paper, “The Dodgers acted appropriately, and any suggestion that they should have done something different is simply unfair and inaccurate.”
Kapler, set to enter his second season as Phillies manager, posted his account of the incidents to his personal blog this week, defending his actions while claiming “no allegation of sexual assault [was] made to me during my handling of this incident.”