It was a routine the charismatic athlete had come to rely on.

Chat up a couple of women at a club. Show them that a TV personality and former NFL player can be down-to-earth and genuine. Convince the women that the night is young and there is more fun elsewhere. Ply them with drinks laced with sedatives that blacken their memories and incapacitate their bodies. Rape at least one of them.

For months, Darren Sharper’s actions played on repeat across four states. More than a dozen accusers came forward in a case that would ultimately require him to be sentenced in five jurisdictions, one of which was a federal court.

The final sentence was handed down Tuesday in a Los Angeles courtroom in which Sharper arrived shackled and in an orange jumpsuit, his signature goatee still intact.

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The 41-year-old was stoic as he listened to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor sentence him to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping two women in Los Angeles.

A five-time Pro Bowl selection who was working as an analyst for the NFL Network, Sharper had approached two women at Bootsy Bellows, a nightclub in West Hollywood in October 2013. He invited them to another party, but said he had to stop at his hotel. Inside his room, he offered the women drinks. One woman awoke to find herself naked, and Sharper sexually assaulting her.

Weeks later, Sharper was at the same nightclub and invited two women to a party. Again, he stopped at his hotel. After the women awoke, they sought medical treatment.

Last year, Sharper pleaded guilty or no contest to drugging and raping a total of nine women in multiple states, although a judge said a pre-sentencing report indicated there were as many as 16 victims.

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His deal with Los Angeles prosecutors includes serving 50% of his sentence, minus time already served. A recently passed state law that increases parole chances for nonviolent criminals may also decrease the amount of time Sharper serves, as rape of an intoxicated person is not considered violent in California, Deputy Dist. Atty Alison Foster said.

In addition to receiving sentences from judges in Arizona, Nevada and Louisiana, Sharper was also ordered to serve more than 18 years by a federal judge in Louisiana. All sentences are to be served concurrently.

Foster called Pastor’s ruling appropriate.

If the case had gone to trial, Sharper’s maximum exposure would have been about 30 years, Foster said, but there would be no guarantee. The plea deal means there can be no appeal.

“That gives your victims some closure and saves them the trauma of having to testify,” she said.

Sharper did not make a statement at Tuesday’s proceedings, and his attorneys declined to comment.

Two of his victims, flanked by attorney Gloria Allred, however, did choose to speak.

The first, stood behind a lectern in the jury box, out of the sight line of her rapist. She started to speak but stopped. She trembled. She blinked. She cried.

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And then she spoke of the night she and a friend encountered Sharper at a club. After attending a party together, they were headed to another gathering, but Sharper said he first had to pick up something from his hotel room. He handed her a drink. Darkness filled her head.

“I can only imagine myself lying there like a vegetable while he took advantage of my body without my permission,” she said. “I have lost every bit of self-confidence I’ve ever had and am always in fear while alone. It doesn’t matter whether it’s day or night, I can see a guy and automatically in my head think, ‘What if this guy tries to rape me?’”

The woman said her surfing career fizzled. She found she couldn’t focus or strike up her usual passion for the sport. She lost her sponsor. She struggled to find her self-worth. “I feel lost in this world,” she said.

The other victim in the courtroom chose to sit on the witness stand, at one point meeting eyes with Sharper.

Her words came loud, but breathless, and at times she gasped to get through the tears.

Her friend was raped that night. She was not. But she can’t shake the blank footage that plays in her mind.

“I’ve tried to remember and I can’t, not a thing,” she said. “It’s the darkest moment in my life. It’s the moment when someone had complete control over me, I don’t know what happened to me, I don’t know what he did with me, I’ll never know.”

The woman said when she came to, her mouth and nose were bleeding. She vomited. She worried that a police report would mean Sharper would come after her.

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People told her she had been lucky, but she had nightmares of Sharper raping her, strangling her. She blamed herself. “It got so bad I stopped trying to sleep,” she said.

She was not herself in the final moments she could have shared with her sister who was battling brain cancer and died four months after the assault.

Sharper had stolen the little time she could have focused on her best friend, she said.

But Darren Sharper, she declared, will never take something so precious from another woman again.

corina.knoll@latimes.com

For more news from Southern California, follow me on Twitter: @corinaknoll

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UPDATES:

7:25 p.m.: This article was rewritten and updated with comments from two victims and a prosecutor.

This story was originally published at 10:40 a.m.</s>Former American football star Darren Sharper has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after admitting to drugging and raping two women in California.

The 41-year-old pleaded no contest to charges in California of rape by use of drugs and furnishing a controlled substance, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said in a statement.

District Attorney spokeswoman Jane Robinson said this was the last sentencing the former Super Bowl winner faced for crimes committed in various different states.

The sentence will run concurrently with a previous 18-year sentence handed down in a federal court in Louisiana on similar charges, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the eastern district of Louisiana.

In the California case, Sharper admitted to meeting two women at a West Hollywood nightclub in October 2013 and later inviting them to his hotel room. He gave both of the women a drink, which made them both pass out, prosecutors said.

One woman woke up naked hours later with Sharper sexually assaulting her and the second woman woke up and stopped the attack, prosecutors said.

Months later, in January 2014, Sharper met two separate women and followed the same procedure, prosecutors said.

The two women woke up hours later and one woman believed she had been sexually assaulted. Both left the hotel and sought medical treatment, prosecutors said.

Sharper, a five-time Pro Bowl safety who retired from the NFL in 2011 after helping lead the New Orleans Saints to a Super Bowl championship, had pleaded guilty in federal court in Louisiana in May 2015 to distributing controlled substances to three unsuspecting women and then sexually assaulting them while they were incapacitated.

He has also pleaded guilty or no contest to rape or attempted rape charges involving several women in Arizona and Nevada.

Sharper's 14-year career in the NFL included stints with the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. He was working as an NFL Network analyst when women began to allege they had blacked out while drinking with him and woke up to find they had been raped.

His 20 year sentence will be served in federal prison at a location to be determined by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in eastern Louisiana.

The sentences will run concurrently as part of a negotiated plea deal.</s>LOS ANGELES | Former NFL star Darren Sharper was sentenced Tuesday a 20-year prison term, ending a tour of shame and punishment in the courthouse where he first admitted drugging and raping women in four states.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor denounced Sharper’s “horrible conduct” and “disgraceful abuse of trust” during the hearing that concluded prosecutions that unmasked the popular former all-pro safety and Super Bowl champ as a serial rapist.

Under the terms of a plea deal negotiated with prosecutors in four states, Sharper will be eligible for parole in about eight years because California law requires he serve half his sentence and he has already been behind bars more than two years since his arrest.

But he will probably serve more time if an appeals court upholds an 18-year prison sentence handed down by a New Orleans federal judge who rejected the deal as too lenient. Sharper has appealed that harsher sentence.

Sharper, 41, sat quietly in court in orange jail scrubs and never addressed the court or two emotional victims who spoke about evenings that began innocently enough partying with friends turned into nightmares they can no longer escape after he secretly slipped drugs in their shot glasses and insisted they drink.

Both women blacked out and later awoke to the groggy reality that something terribly wrong had occurred that they couldn’t immediately comprehend in their drug-induced stupor.

“I started vomiting, my head was pounding and I had trouble seeing clearly,” said one victim, who said her rape on Jan. 15, 2014 was “the worst night of my life.”

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe 2, teared up before she even addressed the court and dabbed at her nose with a tissue throughout. She said her surfing career spiraled downward afterward, she lost her self-confidence, lives in fear and at one point considered suicide.

“The only good thing about this situation is that this disgusting low-life human will be sent to prison for many years and is likely he will never be able to do to this to another woman again,” she said. “I hope this scumbag will now feel as worthless as he has made me feel.”

Sharper, 41, was working as an NFL network analyst when women in several cities began reporting how nights of partying with their girlfriends and Sharper ended with them waking up in his hotel room confused and discovering they had been sexually assaulted.

Sharper’s arrest came as the NFL was dealing with off-field problems with players accused of crimes ranging from spousal abuse to murder.

The second woman, identified as Jane Doe 4, was with a friend when they were drugged by Sharper in his hotel room in 2013, hours after they met at a Sports Illustrated 50th anniversary party.

She woke up on a bed with her clothes on, blood coming out of her nose and did now know where she was. She said her friend had been sexually assaulted, and both fled fearing for their lives.

“It’s one thing to be a victim, but to be the victim that got ‘lucky’ in some eyes is not easy to live with,” Jane Doe 4 said. “When I think back to that night I wonder what he could have done to me. That’s not lucky. It’s haunting.”

The Associated Press does not generally name people who are victims of sex crimes.

Sharper retired from the league in 2011 after a 14-year career with the Green Bay Packers, the Minnesota Vikings and, finally, in New Orleans with the Saints, where he won a Super Bowl.

Lawyers for Sharper had vigorously disputed the charges before he abruptly gave up his defense in March 2015 on the eve of a preliminary hearing to decide if the Los Angeles case would go to trial.

From the Los Angeles courtroom, Sharper appeared by video-conferencing and pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting one woman and trying to attack another in suburban Phoenix in 2013.

An hour later, he pleaded no contest to drugging and raping two women he picked up at a West Hollywood bar on two occasions in late 2013 and early 2014.

The next day, he pleaded guilty via video to a reduced felony attempted sex assault charge for a Las Vegas case.

He later pleaded guilty in Louisiana to federal charges of drugging women so he could rape them and state charges to three counts of rape.

At Sharper’s sentencing in Louisiana federal court, he told the judge he wanted to “apologize a thousand times.”

On Tuesday in the Los Angeles courtroom, Sharper had nothing to say besides providing simple, short answers to routine legal sentencing questions posed by the judge.</s>LOS ANGELES — Former NFL star Darren Sharper's tour of shame and punishment reaches its conclusion Tuesday in the courthouse where he first admitted drugging and raping women in four states.

The sentencing in Los Angeles Superior Court marks the end of prosecutions that unmasked the popular former all-pro safety and Super Bowl champ as a serial rapist.

Sharper, 41, who told a federal judge in Louisiana that he wanted to "apologize a thousand times," will have one more opportunity for contrition, but it will have little bearing on his punishment.

Under the terms of a plea deal negotiated with prosecutors in four states, Sharper will be sentenced to a term that would require about eight more years behind bars. But that term was superseded by the New Orleans federal judge who rejected it as too lenient and sentenced him to 18 years in prison.

He has appealed the harsher federal sentence.

Sharper was working as an NFL network analyst when women in several cities began telling police they had blacked out while drinking with him and woke up groggy to discover they had been sexually assaulted.

Sharper's arrest also came as the NFL was dealing with off-field problems with players accused of crimes ranging from spousal abuse to murder.

Sharper retired from the league in 2011 after a 14-year career with the Green Bay Packers, the Minnesota Vikings and, finally, in New Orleans with the Saints, where he won a Super Bowl.

Lawyers for Sharper had vigorously disputed the charges before he abruptly gave up his defense in March 2015 on the eve of a preliminary hearing to decide if the Los Angeles case would go to trial.

From the Los Angeles courtroom, Sharper appeared by video-conferencing in a Phoenix courtroom and pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting one woman and trying to attack another in suburban Phoenix in 2013.

An hour later, he pleaded no contest to drugging and raping two women he picked up at a West Hollywood bar on two occasions in late 2013 and early 2014.

The next day, he pleaded guilty via video to a reduced felony attempted sex assault charge for a Las Vegas case.

He later pleaded guilty in Louisiana to federal charges of drugging women so he could rape them and state charges to three rape counts.</s>Lately, I’ve been wondering what my place at CMC is as a woman. From our namesake originally as Claremont Men’s College to our institutional skewing towards male-dominated fields such as economics, I’m not quite sure how I fit in. Our “bro culture,” whether an undercurrent or overt, is undeniable. One administrator once told me that to be a woman at CMC, you have to be “tough and hot.” I don’t think she’s wrong. How exactly do women fit in at CMC? Historical records show there’s undoubtedly a trend.

Looking back, CMC archives discuss the “masculine, bold and direct” ethos stemming from the GI connection. A 1959 profile in Harper’s Magazine describes CMC as “exuberantly extroverted, tireless cheerleaders of fun, and, in their own self-image, mad bad playboys.” While this gradually petered out, the driven and individualistic sentiment remained. The same article remarks that CMC men used to conduct panty raids – essentially breaking into Scripps students’ dorms – across Ninth Street. The Ayer (the former yearbook) caused scandals as it featured nude drawings of Scripps students that rated their bodies.

Kevin Starr, author of the 50-year anniversary book on CMC’s history, Civilization and Commerce, noted that Vietnam and the general 1960s attitudes changed CMC and the college “became a wiser and more inclusive pace. Women held positions on the Board of Trustees and more than held their own in the undergraduate student body.”

President Jack Stark and the CMC Board spent years figuring out the most fair way to implement co-ed integration. He also noted that he didn’t change the curriculum with this transition, as the goal was to always “seek the best students.” The decision to go co-ed passed with a 2/3 majority and was met with a relatively smooth transition from the CMC community. However, but there was still some controversy and CMC male students created t-shirts that said “GCO” – standing for “Get c•nts out” – which circulated around campus.

The first women at CMC, in face of this, stayed “independent and motivated, focused on their goals.” Early women graduates formed the CMC Pioneer Steering Committee, the parent organization of today’s Women and Leadership Alliance. The Committee has a goal of funding an endowment, collecting oral histories of alums, and conducting workshops with the WLA.

These women had their own distinct outlook of their place at CMC. About 25–30% of the entering classes post-coed integration were women. These first batches of women were called “pioneers” who took pride in their “Claremont Men’s College” diplomas. The 1980 senior class (the first co-ed class) president was Meredith Uhlmann. Uhlmann noted, “I intended to win. I believe the reason I won was because I talked to more people.” Even outside of CMC, these pioneers were trailblazers in their own ways, with Elizabeth Matthias ’81 joining a law firm as its first female attorney. She remarked that “she was ready for it, even though people in the firm weren’t.”

While the general attitude of CMC women has been one of determination, there are still many structural gender disparity elements at CMC. One noticeable area of imbalance is our Board of Trustees. The first woman trustee, Edessa Rose (of the Rose Institute’s namesake) was elected to the Board in 1972. Currently, 5/38 trustees are women. CMC’s Board requires a large sum of wealth to join, as well as establishment in a certain field (usually something business-related), hence the disconnect. As more women didn’t join those fields until the 1980s, it makes sense why we have such few women Trustees.

In 1990, there were 11 female faculty members out of 91 tenured or tenure-track professors, according to professor Cynthia Humes. While this number has risen to around 30–40% in recent years, our Government and Economics department in particular skew male. Currently, only one department chair is a woman. In academics, men far outnumber women throughout most departments. Though Keck Science’s chair is Marion Preest, indicating that there have definitely been strides, we’re not there yet.

A turning point when for women could be attributed to Pam Gann’s tenure as president. Gann’s policies included initiating parental leave to recognizing the need to support and further diversity. During this time, the Gender Studies Sequence was created, KLI worked to help women and taught women-specific workshops along with the Berger Institute.

Gann’s presidency perhaps can be viewed as an overall shift for the college, not just for women. One big push during her time was the emphasis on leadership that drove home the ideas of being active and vocal, as well as taking charge. Much of leadership’s rhetoric, even outside of CMC, has its masculine roots. During Gann’s early years, the gender parity was around 40% women. Professor Christine Crockett ’01 remarked that there were only three female Literature faculty members during her time. Crockett noted, “[This] struck me as incongruous, as we had few female faculty members, but a female president.” However, she did note that she was rarely conscious of a stark gender divide at CMC.

Professor Hilary Appel joined CMC in 2000 and was the only teaching female professor in the Government Department for much of the aughts. She was also the first female Goverment professor promoted to Full Professor and given an endowed chair. She noted that she would frequently find herself in a room with all men, yet she previously experienced this both in graduate school and when she taught at Duke University.

Professor Emliy Pears ’08 noted some changes between her time as a student and her return to campus as a professor since the campus has grown more intellectually diverse, as well as the increase in humanities majors. Despite not having any female government professors when she was a student, she never saw this as a drawback, but is glad that more women have joined the departmentsince then. CMC’s traditional focus on Government and Economics has in the past lent itself to this masculine image as those tend to be male-dominated fields off-campus as well. In regard to vibe, Pears remarked that CMC was often seen as the most male-dominated college amongst the 5Cs when she studied in Claremont and sensed a change from then until now.

Currently, on the staff side, the gender breakdown is more equal with women actually heading many departments. Off Campus Study, the Athenaeum, Center for Student Opportunity, Treasurer’s Office, the Registrar, Admissions: all run by women. Whereas our gender imbalance is noticeable in faculty, our staff side is much more even, if not women-dominated. However, on the Silicon Valley Program level and the President’s Advisory Council – which were historically male-dominated – 16 out of the 25 are women on the 2016-2017 Council.

We’re now hovering close to even on a male-female student ratio. We have an active Women’s Forum, a robust Gender Studies and Sexuality Sequence, and many women-helmed departments on campus. Even in my brief 3 years thus far, I’ve seen a more active feminist discourse more women talking openly about what it means to occupy that space at CMC.

Professor Cynthia Humes told me “if a women wants to make it [at CMC], she has to include herself and not simply complain.” Perhaps this is the CMC ethos – to roll up our sleeves and get busy.</s>Sharper was sentenced as part of a plea deal he reached last year — a “global resolution” that his attorneys said helped resolve sexual assault cases filed against him in multiple states.

“I can only imagine myself lying there like a vegetable while he took advantage of my body without my permission,” one of the victims said in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom on Tuesday. “I have lost every bit of self-confidence I’ve ever had and am always in fear while alone. It doesn’t matter whether it’s day or night, I can see a guy and automatically in my head think, ‘What if this guy tries to rape me?’ ”

Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor noted the statements she and another victim gave as he sentenced the one-time Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers player.

“I daresay that I cannot speak more eloquently or passionately about the horrible misconduct of Mr. Sharper and the unfathomable effect he has had on the two alleged victims,” the judge said. “I think their individual statements speak volumes as to this disgraceful abuse of trust and the behavior of Mr. Sharper.”

After Los Angeles authorities arrested Sharper on suspicion of sexual assault in January 2014, women in other cities came forward, alleging similar attacks. The former New Orleans Saints safety has been convicted of drugging and raping nine women in Los Angeles, Nevada, Arizona and Louisiana.

In August, a federal judge in New Orleans sentenced him to more than 18 years for the attacks. The judge said a federal presentencing report indicated there were 16 victims.

The sentence in Los Angeles is to be served at the same time as others around the country.

Sharper, a five-time Pro Bowler and a Super Bowl winner who retired in 2011, went on to work as an analyst for the NFL Network until his arrest in Los Angeles.

He pleaded no contest in March 2015 to the Los Angeles charges accusing him of drugging and raping two women.
Ex National Football League player Darren Sharper is sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping two women in the American city of Los Angeles, California. Sharper has been accused of attacking a dozen women across the United States.