At Duke, It's Getting Hot in Here
Essence magazine reports that the alleged rape victim at Duke has cried rape before, a decade ago, when the 17- or 18-year-old claimed that she had been raped by several men, one of whom she knew. Police declined to pursue the case, according to relatives, "out of fear for her safety." (Huh?) One likely reason: the alleged rape had allegedly occurred three years before.
Sports Illustrated gets the police report:
According to the Creedmoor police report in August 1996, when the woman was 18, she told officers she was raped and beaten by three men "for a continual time" in 1993, when she was 14. She told police she was attacked at an "unspecified location" on a street in Creedmoor, a town 15 miles northeast of Durham.
The magazine also reports that the woman was hospitalized for about a week a year ago and treated for a "nervous breakdown."
The family is also trying to get the young woman to meet with civil-rights attorney Willie Gary, recommended by Jesse Jackson, but she will not. (Check out Gary's website—"Growing up in a poor migrant family, Gary beat the odds to become a multi-millionaire nationally renown [sic] attorney.... Gary keeps rising out of the shack he and his ten sisters and brothers shared." Sheesh. This next to the picture of him and his two Rolls-Royces.)
(By the way, let me give a shout-out to the Harvard Crimson here—the Duke Chronicle, which doesn't even have this story yet, makes me appreciate the job you guys do.)
Sports Illustrated also points out that the woman pleaded guilty to several misdemeanors in 2002.
What does all this mean? Got me. (Lawyers, would a judge allow this material to be entered into evidence?)
If I were a prosecutor, though, I wouldn't be feeling too confident about putting this woman on the stand.
