In May 2012, Torii Hunter took time off from his then employers, the Anaheim Angels, to deal with a family crisis back home in Texas. One of the longtime All-Star outfielder’s sons, Darius McClintock-Hunter, had been accused of sexual assault related to a sexual incident involving two teenage girls.
Now, a year later, McClintock-Hunter has been cleared of any wrongdoing and its clear that he was falsely accused. Yet the teen isn’t getting his old life back, so he and his family are now filing suit against the families of the two teenage girls who falsely accused McClintock-Hunter of sexually assaulting them.
More specifically, the son of Torii Hunter and his represented filed a lawsuit seeking up to $40 million from the families of the two girls because of the irreparable harm that has been done to McClintock-Hunter’s image and life. The suit alleges that the girls’ actions, “falsely branded as a 'criminal,' ruined his reputation, sent him to an alternative school for a year, got him kicked off the Prosper High School football team and banned from high school sports."
At the time of the incident, McClintock-Hunter and four other male Prosper students were accused of forcing two female classmates to have sex with them. Yet some 48 hours after calling out McClintock-Hunter, the teenager’s accuser recanted her story and said he was not involved.
When McClintock-Hunter was accused of the alleged crime he was one of the nation’s rapidly rising football recruits. The then-junior had received scholarship offers from LSU, Arkansas and Oregon, among other programs, and there were whispers that he could try to attend the same school as his brother, fellow junior Torii Hunter Jr.
Yet the charges against McClintock-Hunter forced him to withdraw from Prosper (Tex.) High and enroll at an alternative school. That, in turn, kept him away from football, and his lack of action combined with the besmirching of his name to eliminate the major Division I scholarship offers that had come his way before the charges were levied against him.
Clearly, McClintock-Hunter has a case. His brother will attend Notre Dame in the fall and will compete for the Fighting Irish once an injury he suffered in the postseason heals. Meanwhile, McClintock-Hunter will aim to simply continue repairing his image, all while trying to recoup some of the dignity he and his image lost in the aftermath of a disturbing case of misappropriated wrongdoing.
"To this day, nobody has taken responsibility - not the girl, not the Prosper Police Department, not the district attorney," McClintock-Hunter’s legal representative Larry Friedman said in a statement. "No one has taken responsibility for what they've done to this young man. No one's said sorry.
"In today's world, these types of things go viral in a minute. There are millions of stories out there accusing him of sexual assault that can never be erased. You can never erase those allegations. He will live to be 100 years old, barring something unforeseen. For the next 80 years those allegations will be there. The impact of this is tremendous."
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