Kobe Bryant

American athlete, a basketball star of Los Angeles Lakers, who was accused of rape in 2003. The son of basketball-coach father and a doting mother, with two older sisters, he was a loner as a teen but the prince of his family. He spent eight years in his youth in Italy, where his father played pro ball for an Italian team, and became fluent in Italian. When he returned to the US at age 14, he had a difficult time fitting in, although he was an honors student. With an agent who was handpicked by his parents, he was drafted in the 1st NBA round of 1996. A loner on the court, he has been accused of not being a team player; but others call his singular vision "focus" on the game. In late 1999, after dating several women, he met Vanessa Laine, then age 16, a high-school sophomore. They began dating, and despite disapproval from his parents, they married on 18 April 2001 and he became estranged from his family. Kobe and his young wife had a daughter, Natalia Diamante Bryant, born in January 2003. By March 2003, there were reports of impending divorce. On 30 June 2003, facing knee surgery the following day in Vail, Colorado, he checked into a hotel. The next day, a 19-year-old female employee of the hotel told sheriff’s deputies that the basketball star had sexually assaulted her. A warrant for Bryant’s arrest was issued on 4 July, and Bryant surrendered and was released on $25,000 bail. News of the arrest was made public on July 6th. Bryant was charged on 18 July 2003 with sexual assault stemming from an incident in a Colorado hotel room on 30 June 2003, an encounter which he had previously denied. He had been ordered to stand trial. On 1 September 2004, charges were dropped but the victim vowed to pursue the matter in civil court. The criminal lawsuit charging Bryant with rape was dropped on 1 September 2004 when Bryant’s accuser refused to testify against him. Her lawyers announced that she no longer wanted to cooperate with the prosecution. Bryant apologized to her saying that, while he thought their sexual encounter was consensual, he recognized that she thought it was not. The accuser filed a separate civil lawsuit against Bryant, which the two sides ultimately settled with the specific terms of the settlement being undisclosed to the public. On 1 May 2006, at 2:03am, in Orange County, California, his second child and second daughter, Gianna Maria-Onore Bryant, was born. On 16 December 2011, Vanessa Bryant filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences, and the couple requested joint custody of their daughters. On 11 January 2013, Bryant and his wife both announced via social media that they had called off their divorce. On 5 December 2016, at 4:09pm, in Newport Beach, California, Vanessa gave birth to their third daughter, Bianka Bella Bryant. A fourth daughter, named after himself, was born in June 2019. Link to Wikipedia biography