How Matt Araiza, former NFL punter, is trying to clear name after rape accusation

SAN DIEGO – In an effort to clear his name and get a job, former NFL punter Matt Araiza has sent NFL teams a piece of evidence that reveals several startling facts about what happened the night he was accused of raping a 17-year-old girl in San Diego.

It’s an audio recording of a meeting Dec. 7, when a San Diego County prosecutor met with the woman and her attorney. It’s 101 minutes long and was not released to the public.

But USA TODAY Sports obtained it recently, then interviewed Araiza and the woman separately to break it down in detail. In the recording, the prosecutor gives a point-by-point explanation of why her office never charged Araiza and others with any crimes after they were accused of brutally gang-raping the woman at a house party near San Diego State in October 2021.

Araiza’s agent, Joe Linta, said he has sent the recording to about 20 NFL teams in hopes of getting Araiza’s career back on track after the Buffalo Bills released him amid the controversy last August.

The question is what they will make of it – and if they will be willing to give him another chance.

At a minimum, it paints a different picture of what happened compared to the shocking allegations that came out against Araiza and two other former San Diego State football players last year in a pending civil lawsuit filed by the woman’s attorney.  The recording references nine brief video clips of the woman’s sexual encounters that night, none of which showed Araiza, who has denied wrongdoing and says the recording is “huge.” His attorney said he declined an offer from the woman’s attorney to settle the case for $50,000.

“I know the teams know the true facts,” Araiza told USA TODAY Sports. “They’ve heard the audio. They know this isn’t true. It’s that we need the public to understand as well. Because I think teams have a fear that if they sign me, there will be a little bit of backlash because the public has been told things that aren’t true.”

The woman, now 18, has a different view of the recording.

“I don’t think it exonerates anybody,” she told USA TODAY Sports.

USA TODAY’s policy is to not identify victims of alleged sexual assault.

Warning: Some of the details are graphic.

Where did this recording come from?

The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office invited the woman and her attorney to a private meeting, where a prosecutor told them they had decided not to file criminal charges in relation to her allegations against Araiza and other San Diego State football players.

At least two recordings were made of the meeting, but the recordings and the details in them were not released to the public. The district attorney’s office instead released a general public statement later that day that said the evidence didn’t support filing charges in the case. It didn’t get into any facts about why not, in keeping with the policy of the office.

In an interview with USA TODAY Sports, the woman emphasized that she was intoxicated to the point of not being able to consent to sex and that the video clips show only a fraction of what happened that night. She said the videos add up to around 30 seconds out of a sequence that lasted more than 90 minutes.

“I just don’t think that’s fair at all to look at these short clips that were already way into this assault already happening and make a judgment on that and say that that was consensual,” she said.

What was the woman’s reaction to the decision?

She cried when Deputy District Attorney Trisha Amador told her no criminal charges would be filed. Then the meeting resumed and Amador discussed the evidence, which included four terabytes of data, more than 35 taped witness interviews, a physical exam of the woman and nine video clips that were made that night of the woman’s sexual encounters.

The woman started to watch the video clips near the end of the meeting, hoping to fill in gaps of her memory that night. But then she changed her mind and told Amador to stop playing them.

“I could have just not reported this and probably been happier,” the woman said at the end of the meeting.

“I’m sorry,” Amador said.

What did the video clips show?

Amador and district attorney investigator Ted Mansour said the video clips showed sexual encounters with San Diego State football player Pa’a Ewaliko on a couch in the living room and apparently two other men in a bedroom.

They were obtained via search warrants and came from the accounts of Ewaliko and another SDSU player, Zavier Leonard, according to the recording. They are “point of view” clips, meaning they were apparently filmed by the men having sex with her.

Amador notes that the clips did not show her “passed out” and that she instead was actively participating in the encounters and appeared to know at some point she was being videotaped. The clips didn’t show evidence of her being forced.

“Because of what's in the video, I can't prove a forceable sexual assault,” Amador told her.

Prosecutors determined Araiza, a sixth-round NFL draft pick last year, was not in these video clips based on the physical characteristics of the men shown. Araiza had left the party before then, according to testimony from a witness and the timestamps of the videos.

A witness also said the woman was approaching men at the party, asking to have sex with them.

“It's alleged that one of those people that you approached was Pa'a and made that statement to Pa'a, and that is something that was heard by a separate independent witness,” Amador said.

The woman said she did not know she was being filmed and doesn’t trust a number of the witness statements. She said she has “no recollection” of asking for sex.

How was Araiza involved?

Araiza admitted having sex with the woman that night during a call with the woman that was recorded by police a few days after the party. It happened at the side of the house. Araiza said he never went inside, disputing the woman’s lawsuit, which said he led her inside and threw her on the bed face-first.

“We had a brief encounter, and it is absolutely not how it’s been portrayed in the media or the lawsuit,” Araiza said in his interview with USA TODAY Sports.

He was 21 at the time and the woman was 17, leading to questions about whether he committed statutory rape of a minor. Like Araiza, Ewaliko and Leonard also admitted having sex with the woman, said it was consensual and denied wrongdoing, according to records in the case.

Araiza voluntarily submitted a DNA sample for the rape investigation. But DNA samples don’t prove anything if the men linked to them have admitted they had sex with her. The issue is whether she consented to it or was capable of consenting to it if she was intoxicated.

Amador also said the woman’s friends who were at the party that night gave witness statements.  One of those friends said that shortly after the woman arrived at the party, the woman left and came back to tell her friend she just had sex, apparently with Araiza, according to the timeline constructed by the district attorney’s office.

“You appeared to be having fun and that the encounter on the side of the house with Matt, suspect Araiza, was consensual,” Amador told her.

The woman reiterated to USA TODAY Sports she doesn’t trust the witness statements.

“He should face accountability for what he did and what he admitted to doing,” she said. “It was wrong. I was 17 and I was drunk, regardless of whether the DA was able to prove. It was wrong.”

What about statutory rape?

This was a big issue with Araiza last year since he essentially admitted to having sex with a 17-year-old girl. But a suspect is not guilty of this crime if he reasonably believed the woman was 18 or older, according to the law. Araiza said he believed she was 18. Ewaliko and Leonard were 18 at the time of their encounters with her.

“I have to be able to prove that they knew your age,” Amador told her.

Amador said that a witness who was in the house gave a statement saying the woman told people at the party she was 18. Amador also noted that a video from a different party from back then showed the woman saying she was 18, suggesting it would be hard to prove that people should have known she was younger.

The woman’s lawsuit filed against Araiza in August states that she “informed Araiza that she attended Grossmont High School,” implying she was under 18. Amador brought up the woman’s alleged mention of “Grossmont High” in her civil lawsuit. But the woman denied saying that.

“No, that was not me,” she said.

The woman told USA TODAY Sports she told Araiza she went to “Grossmont,” which also can be interpreted to mean Grossmont College, which is about seven miles from SDSU.

“I didn’t say my age at all and nobody asked me,” she told USA TODAY Sports. “Matt didn’t ask me. None of the guys asked me. Nobody at the party asked me, so I just wasn’t prompted and I didn’t answer."

What about the blood, bruises and ripped piercings?

Her lawsuit states that her nose, belly button and ear piercings had been pulled out and that she was also bleeding from her vagina.

But Amador initially said the sex video clips show her piercings “are all still in.”

“So I don't know who or how or when those would have been removed, but during the videos, all of your piercings are still in,” Amador said.

Amador later acknowledged on the recording she couldn’t see the woman’s belly in the video to determine if the piercing was ripped out.

“That's the worst one,” the woman replied. “It was completely ripped through.· I still have like a hole in it. It completely ripped through.”

Amador said an expert looked at the physical evidence but could not determine if her apparent bruises were hickeys instead. The woman initially characterized them as hickeys, according to previous statements by her and others.

The video clips also did not show blood on her, Amador said. She added there was a “workable theory as to where the blood came from” but they weren’t certain. She said one of the videos appeared to show her braces cutting one of the men during oral sex, possibly explaining the blood.

A sexual assault exam of the woman found no lacerations and was deemed “normal,” though Amador noted that doesn’t mean a rape didn’t happen.

The woman’s attorney, Dan Gilleon, said a key fact in the civil case is that “she came out of the room saying she was raped and bloody.”

The woman addressed this in the interview with USA TODAY Sports.

“Even if (the blood) were to come from someone else, I don’t know in what consensual situation somebody would get cut and start bleeding all over the other person and that seems like it’s a normal, consensual situation,” she said. “It just makes less sense to me. Especially when my friend showers me and says that there’s blood coming out of my vagina. That doesn’t make any sense.”

What about rape while intoxicated?

The woman’s lawsuit states Araiza could observe that she was “heavily intoxicated” that night and raped her. The woman said she had memory problems and told police she was drinking from a bottle of vodka that night, raising questions about whether she was raped while intoxicated.

The issue, Amador told her, is that “I have to be able to prove your intoxication level.”

“Oh, that's (expletive), like, that you can't prove any of that,” the woman replied.

Araiza told USA TODAY Sports he didn’t give her a drink and that she didn’t appear intoxicated to him.

After the apparent encounter with Araiza, her friends reported the woman came back a second time and said she just had sex with a second man, apparently Ewaliko, according to the timeline reconstructed by the district attorney’s office.

“You're described as being OK, not scared or distraught,” Amador said. “Seemed happy, seemed consensual.· And there's no indication that you were at an intoxication level at this point.”

The video evidence didn’t support that either, according to Mansour, the district attorney investigator. “There's nothing that appears to be you can't control the position that your body is in,” he told her.

That doesn’t mean she wasn’t intoxicated. The woman said in the Dec. 7 meeting that “you can't tell how drunk I am off of looking at me.”

“Upon leaving the house I could not even walk myself out of there,” she told USA TODAY Sports. “I couldn’t even shower myself. My friend had to shower me. I mean, I just was out of it.”

What about fear and vulnerability?

The woman indicated to detectives that she chose to participate in the sex acts for fear of being hurt, considering that the men were much bigger and that she wouldn’t be able to do much to resist, especially since she said she was intoxicated.

Amador again noted the lack of evidence that would support this, even if this is what she was thinking at the time.

“There are no reports by you that any verbal threats were made to you by any of the suspects,” Amador explained. “When asked by the police if you had sex with anybody at the party that was not forced, your response was you never said no to anyone, but you never intended to have sex with them.”

In her sexual assault exam afterward, Amador also noted she told the nurses no force was used.

The woman told USA TODAY Sports she felt “helpless” in her situation that night.

“It’s an intimidating feeling, and when you know that you’re drunk and you know that you’re not wearing much clothing and you know that you’re young, it’s really just a helpless feeling almost,” she said.

What's next?

Ewaliko faces a separate criminal charge of child pornography possession after law enforcement looked at his Apple iCloud account in the course of the rape investigation and said they found evidence related to that. He has pleaded not guilty.

The woman’s civil lawsuit remains pending against Araiza, Ewaliko and Leonard. She is seeking unspecified damages, and a trial date has been set for October in San Diego. Gilleon, her attorney, confirmed he offered to settle the case with Araiza for $50,000.

Araiza told USA TODAY Sports he would not consider paying money to settle the woman's civil case.

"Settling is admitting guilt," he said. "That’s not the truth. That’s not what happened."

His agent said NFL teams fear a public-relations backlash that might come from signing him.

“We didn’t think that these teams would be as discriminatory as they are,” said Linta, Araiza’s agent. “I never thought in a million years that once he was cleared and proved that he did nothing wrong that teams would still be ignorant. That’s really what it is: ignorance.”

Personal reactions

The woman sees it differently. She said she was “happy” when she learned Araiza was cut from the Bills last August, if only because she said it was a form of accountability. She said her life hasn’t been easy. She said she and her family have received threats since this case went public last year. She also said she has been recovering from an eating disorder and is committed to her civil lawsuit, which has a lower burden of proof than criminal cases. She said it is not motivated by the possibility of financial gain.

"I really don’t care about money at all," she said. "If I was told that it would be a dollar, if I was told that it would be $1 million, it would make no difference to me. I just want people to know what happened and I just want all of the suspects involved to feel they are facing some sort of consequences. That’s all I care about."

She said her goal with the civil case is for it to be resolved with an acknowledgment "that something happened."

Araiza still wants to play in the NFL but could pursue a job in the software field if it doesn’t work out. He said a female family member of his is a sexual assault survivor, adding depth to his perspective in this case.

“There was a time in this country and in the world where a woman would come forward and no one would believe them, and that’s not right,” Araiza told USA TODAY Sports. “But the pendulum has swung to the other end. And it feels like it’s instantly believed, and I don’t think that’s right, either. So having gone through both ends of the evil spectrum, that’s been tough. Yeah, it’s been really hard on my family. That’s what’s hurt me the most, for sure.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com

Follow reporter Josh Peter @Joshlpeter11. Email: Jpeter@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Matt Araiza, ex-NFL punter, and accuser discuss details of rape case