The path to "Jane Doe's" statutory rape accusation against Pete Rose is a roundabout one: In 2016, Rose sued John Dowd—the lawyer whose late 1980s gambling investigation helped bring down the baseball star—over defamation.
The root of it, reports the Cincinnati Enquirer, was a 2015 radio interview in which Dowd accused Rose of raping 12- to 14-year-olds, whom Rose allegedly had sent to him at spring training camp. As part of that case comes the specific rape allegation, which was part of a motion filed Monday by Dowd's lawyers.