We already knew tight end Jerramy Stevens had some skeletons in his past, but there are some very startling accusations made by an alleged victim and police in a riveting story published Monday in the Seattle Times.

As part of a series of stories detailing a long history of past offenses by numerous University of Washington players, the story says an alleged victim and police investigators accused Stevens of rape in 2000 while at UW. Stevens allegedly drugged the freshman student and then raped her, leaving her with memory loss.

A frustrating chain of events between the police, who wanted to charge Stevens, and the prosecutors' office, resulted in charges not being filed. The alleged victim and Stevens settled in civil court in 2004 for an undisclosed sum.

The gist of the story is that Stevens, and others associated with the UW program, have received numerous chances to make up for past mistakes. Stevens has been arrested three times for alcohol-related offenses, his most recent resulting in a conviction in Arizona in September. He was sentenced to 12 days in jail but the jail term was stayed pending Stevens' appeal. The first of those offenses occurred while he was still enrolled at Washington.

Stevens signed a one-year contract with the Bucs not long after his last DUI arrest for a relatively meager $600,000. He becomes a free agent next month, but there is no word on whether the Bucs plan to re-sign him.

The Bucs maintain that Stevens has been a model citizen for them since arriving in Tampa but make no apologies for his past offenses or allegations leveled against him. They offered no particular comment to this article because the allegations predate their relationship with Stevens.

(Times photo - Brian Cassella. Click to enlarge.)