At Duke, It’s Getting Hot in Here
Posted on April 28th, 2006 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
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 websiteâ”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 hereâthe 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.
3 Responses
4/28/2006 12:31 pm
Richard,
I wouldn’t “shout out” The Crimson
so quickly.
Today’s issue has an opinion piece by one Aaron Chadbourne and it ends with “If a future president of Harvard would like to demonstrate that Allston is the future of our school, I can think of no stronger endorsement than for him—or for her—to move out of Harvard Yard in order to build a new presidential office across the river.”
The piece is about University Hall.
Why would The Crimson allow the piece to be published, unless they, in addition to Mr. Chadbourne, also don’t know “what’s what” in The Yard.
4/28/2006 1:31 pm
Well, look, in defense of the Crimson, the fact that they print an opinion piece hardly means that they endorse it. Maybe they just thought it was interesting or provoative. Maybe they just needed something to fill space. Maybe it was a slow news day. But newspapers are pretty clear about not endorsing the op-ed pieces they run.
5/19/2009 7:04 am
The original commenter did not read the piece closely. The note about moving the Harvard president’s office to Allston was an analogy. The Quad is no more central to Harvard College than Allston is to Harvard University. The Yard remains the symbolic center of Harvard, and it would make no more sense for the Harvard president to move her office to Allston than for the College dean to move her office to the Quad. Yet the administration has no problem exiling students/centers of student life to either. If the college administration were serious that Hilles were a great location for any office, then it should have no problem moving there. This is similar to the administration’s long term plans to place a student center and new undergraduate housing in Allston. Were the administration serious about it, let them move first. That would be a sign that it were actually viable.