University of Michigan football players typically get plenty of media coverage, especially when they’re considered “star players” like defensive back Jabrill Peppers is.
But Peppers got a rather unwelcome blast of attention recently after one woman posted 5,000 flyers around campus, stating that Peppers had given her chlamydia.
In fact, the female student stated that Peppers had given her the sexually transmitted infection not just once this year, but twice.
The student, who still remains unnamed, composed a scathing 660-word “open letter” to Peppers, whom she had previously dated. According to Elite Daily, thousands of copies of the letter were posted throughout Michigan’s Mason Hall on campus.
According to the New York Daily News, the 20-year-old freshman footballer had just made his debut on the Michigan Wolverines team two weeks earlier. Hailing from New Jersey, Peppers was named the Air Force National Sophomore of the Year in 2011 while he was in high school.
Peppers told his 48,000 Twitter followers that he thought the “slander” was “crazy,” although he hasn’t provided any other comments on the letter yet.
According to the author of the letter, Peppers had engaged in sexual acts with her and at least one other female partner, all while he knew that he had chlamydia and could infect his partners.
“I cannot stomach to see your face again knowing that you’re infecting other young women unbeknownst to them, which as you may know, is a felony,” the letter reads. “I know that you get checked every six months.”
“The sad part is, I don’t know exactly when you infected me again. The other sad part is I don’t know how because on my end, I was always monogamous. Being monogamous with your a** has gotten me the same STI in one year. ‘That’s how diseases get passed around,’ right?”
The most commonly-transmitted STI today is chlamydia, and even though it can be treated effectively with antibiotics, it rarely shows any symptoms in its earliest stages. In other words, many women are infected with chlamydia for weeks without even knowing it.
Only about 38% of young women are tested for chlamydia each year, even though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there were around 1.3 million cases of chlamydia in 2010.
Although chlamydia is treatable when caught early, it can still cause lasting damage to the female reproductive system. Along with substantial chronic pain and inflammation, chlamydia can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, fatal ectopic pregnancies, and infertility.