Baseball Legend Pete Rose Being Accused of Heinous Crime

08/31/2017 04:03 pm EDT

Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader in the MLB, is being accused of statutory rape. The now-adult victim says that she was 16-years-old when Rose allegedly committed the crime in the '70s.

The accusation was made in a defense motion filed on Monday in federal court, according to Daily Mail. It was part of an ongoing defamation lawsuit that the 76-year-old baseball legend filed in 2016 against attorney John Dowd.

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In the lawsuit, Rose claimed that Dowd's report led to him being ejected from baseball for gambling. During a July 2015 interview on Pennsylvania radio station WCHE-AM, Dowd claimed that the disgraced former athlete raped young girls during spring training.

The victim, who identified in the motion only as "Jane Doe," says that she and Rose had sex for the time in Cincinnati, prior to her 16th birthday. At the time, Rose was 34-years-old.

"In 1973, when I was 14 or 15 years old, I received a phone call from Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds. Sometime after that, Pete Rose and I began meeting at a house in Cincinnati," the woman said in her sworn statement.

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In a written statement, which was first reported by ESPN, Rose acknowledged his affair with "Jane Doe." However, he said that it happened in 1975, not 1973 like the woman claims.

Rose stated that he believed the woman was older than 16, which is the legal age of consent in the state of Ohio.

At the time, Rose was married with two children. He was still with his first wife, Karolyn, and helping raise their daughter Fawn, and son, Pete Jr.

After sixteen years of marriage, the couple split in 1980. Karolyn cited her husband's womanizing behavior as one of the causes for the divorce.

Because too much time has passed since the alleged rape, Rose cannot be criminally charged.

Ray Genco, Rose's lawyer, has dismissed Dowd's motion calling it a "media distraction" and a "witch hunt."

Rose is currently employed as a baseball analyst for Fox Sports. Even though he was banned from the MLB for life, Rose was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds' hall of fame in 2016. In June, the organization unveiled his statue outside Great American Ball Park.

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