The Smoking Gun has published the search warrant obtained by the North Carolina police to search the premises of house where the alleged rape took place.
Included in the warrant are the names of the three alleged rapists.
The victim stated she tried to leave and the three males (Adam, Bret, and Matt) forcefully held her legs and arms and sexually assaulted her anally, vaginally and orally. The victim states she was hit, kicked and stranged during the assault and she attempted to defend herself, but was overpowered. The victim reported she was sexually assaulted for an approximate 30 minute time period by the three males.
As a way to thwart us hardworking bloggers, Duke University has removed the lacrosse team roster from their site. However, this is the internet and there’s more than one way to skin a cat. By looking over the 2006 stats, we were able to weed out the names of all the Duke players. See Duke, information wants to be free.
Ok, I better put a disclaimer here. We’re not saying these are the guys who did it. Innocent until proven guilty. But, the victim stated that her three attackers were team members. So, my extensive investigative expertise (learned from Encyclopedia Brown) yields only 1 Bret, 3 Matts, and 0 Adams.
Another aspect of this case is the media coverage of it. This is a story that didn’t make ESPN (i.e. national) coverage until the sordid details started filtering out. Yet, Dhani Jones getting arrested for dancing in Miami Beach makes Sportscenter immediately. I don’t often play the race card but this has me scratching my head more than Adam Morrison.
One piece of reporting that I question is that 15 members of the team had prior charges including underage alcohol possession, having open containers of alcohol, loud noise and public urination. I understand this is relevant, but is it really relevant? It’s practically a rite of passage in college to drink beer, make noise and urinate in public. Yes, technically, they had prior charges but the AP headline was “15 Duke lacrosse players had prior charges”, which leads you to believe they have something criminal in their backgrounds. Sorry, but being a drunk asshole isn’t really that big of a crime. (Yes, I know, headlines are sensationalistic and I’m being naive.)
This scandal will catapult Duke lacrosse into the national conciousness negatively for a long time. As much as I dislike the overuse of the term “perfect storm” (thanks to that terrible book and movie), this guy has got it right when detailing why this story is front page news: rape and gender, race, class, timing, and the team’s foolhardy adherence to a code of silence.
Barry Bonds on the juice gets the attention of sports junkies and makes the rounds on the sports blogs. Duke lacrosse players raping a black woman gets on everyone’s radar.
Reactions from the blogosphere:
[Justice 4 Two Sisters]: This blog is keeping track of a ton of the blog entries on this scandal.
[My All time top 5]: “If the lacrosse scandal turns out to be true… and as much as I hope it’s not, it’s hard to shake what appears to be serious evidence to the contrary or at the very least, a major violation of “the stupid rule”… not only does it smear every good student at the University and obliterate any semblance of relations with Durham, but most importantly, it’s a lasting, stinging reinforcement of the Duke Prick Stereotype: that if you’re a rich white kid, you can do no wrong. Get in, get out, get your 6-figure i-banking job, and don’t give a shit about anybody else.”
[Under the Dryer]: “To Devon Sherwood, the lone African-American player on the Duke University Men’s Lacrosse Team. (this is listed on Duke University Athletics public website www.goduke.com) I know you are a freshman, you are probably on scholarship, you are the only brother on this team. I’d be scared to death in some ways if I were you. Despite all this, I am appealing to you young soldier to come forward and tell what you know and or saw and see that these your sisters receive the justice they deserve. This could have been your mother, your sister, your cousin, your girlfriend,your classmate. They are college students just like you, one is a mother, trying to support her children and make a better life. What are you going to do? The activist Angela Davis said “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the afternoon.” Don’t think you can’t or won’t be racially terrorized my brother. You OWE all the hundreds of thousands of our forbearer whose backs YOU stand on, who suffered, worked, protested,marched, sat-in, bled, and died so that you could go to an institution who historically did not always admit African-Americans to be educated or play organized sports. YOU OWE THEM DEVON. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? HOW LONG WILL YOU SIT AND LET THESE SISTERS SUFFER?”
6 replies on “3 alleged rapists named in Duke lacrosse team scandal”
actually, there is an Adam in there — check out number 36.
Source:
http://www.lax.com/team_stats.phtml?team_id=1015&year=06
Duke, Race and Rape — Ok folks the facts are not all in, but there are some things we do know.
A Black exotic dancer alleged several White members of the lacrosse squad gang-raped her while calling her racial slurs. The alleged victim, a student at nearby historically Black North Carolina Central University, told police that she had been hired to perform at a private party on March 13. She said that showed up at a wood-frame house on a quiet tree-lined street when she was pulled into a bathroom by three members of the team, who choked her and raped her. It is reported All but one – an African American – of the 47 members of the team were asked to submit to DNA tests. The alleged victim, whose name is being withheld because she is charging that she was sexually assaulted – said that the assailants were all White.
Ok, there are a few questions that we must ask ourselves.
Let me answer it again for you. No!
No one has the right to rape another person.
Just because the rape victim happens to be African American should have no effect on the prosecution, conviction, and sentencing of her attacker, but the reality is it does.
So let’s be honest with ourselves, the alleged Duke rape is a story lingers in many ways from the disparate treatment of African American rape victims during slavery. As Elizabeth Kennedy, A Research Analyst wrote in her research paper, Victim Race and Rape ” While the connection is not necessarily clear cut, slavery and its legacy of bigotry and sexual violence likely play key roles in the continuing discrimination against black rape victims.”
I agree with her conclusions when she wrote, “this history plays out in rape prosecutions today: a number of studies have shown that the experience of an African American rape victim varies in critical ways from that of her white counterpart.”
Here is what is scary, and how racism may have impact with the allege rape at Duke.
Ms. Kennedy’s research has found that, “Where a black man was convicted of raping a white woman, he was more likely to be charged with a felony, more likely to receive a jail term, more likely to serve his time in a state penitentiary than in a local facility, and received a longer sentence on average than defendants in cases with a different defendant-victim racial dyad.”
She also has found that “When the jury does find the assailant of an African American woman guilty of rape, her race continues to play a role in the proceedings. As she writes” A study of actual trial outcomes indicates that, in combination with defendant race, victim race affects the seriousness of the defendant’s charge and the severity, location, and length of his sentence.”
I guess the balls in the University Police, University Administration and Prosecutors court.
Well folks, Let’s wait and see if an African Women who was allegedly raped by white athletes on the Duke University campus, gets the justice she deserves.
L. Nathaniel Rock
you’re right — he must not get any PT because he doesnt show up on the stats.
one good thing about this — (and I sure good is not the right word here) is that the alleged attackers are so white and so privileged that this isn’t going to be swept under the rug. The disparity in class between Duke students and NCCU makes it a powder keg of controversy. In this case, I am not sure that there will be injustice because the assailants were white. Although I’ve never lived in the south and I’m not certain if the racial divide can be this egregious.
Duke (even though it seemed like they tried to) cannot simply make this go away and give the members of the team a slap on the wrist. The administration will be called to task on this incident. However, in the end, I’m not sure what the administration can do other than cooperate with police investigators. Will this change the fact that the majority of Duke students are “arrogant assholes who were born on third and think they hit a triple”? No. It might force a discussion on Duke campus about race and class but can you undo the 18 years of elitism and sense of entitlement that took place before some of those kids go to college?
It looks like she lied about the whole thing — More questions about the duke rape: It’s about time you consider she lied.
If these boys were so drunk and out of control with lust, why didn’t they ejaculate? Not even one ejaculated?
If condoms were used, where are they? Where’s the empty box? Where are the wrappers? If these boys didn’t clean up the nails, why would they dispose of the condom wrappers? Where is the spermicidal lubricant?
If the stripper was violated by three men, then where is her DNA? Why isn’t there vaginal fluid on the bathroom rug? If she was “dry” where is her urine and blood? She claimed to have been anally assaulted, then where is her fecal material or scat smears? If she was violently orally penetrated, then where is her saliva and tears? Are people claiming that this woman, in complete panic, was capable of inhuman vaginal and anal sphincter control that no fluids dripped out because she made sure to lick up and swallow all of her saliva, “precum”, and ejaculate? If the boys cleaned up all of her vaginal fluids, blood, saliva, urine, and tears, then why didn’t they get rid of the nails?
** Why did she go to her former attorney for advice, when the DA publicly and adamantly believes and supports her claim? Why would a poor working mother of two pay to seek her own legal advice, when the DA is free?!!! *
The forensic nurse said that she had injuries consistent to her story, which means that she recently had sex, but there’s no way a nurse would be able to determine when or if the sex was consensual or not, there is normal bruising with consensual sex.
Why wasn’t there skin, fibers, or hair under the stripper’s fake nails?
If she lied about the bruises on her body and how she got them, and she lied to her family about her being a stripper, could she be lying about the rape? alibi was one of the excuses to make a false claim. Was the stripper on probation? Would her probation be revoked if she was arrested for public intoxication and under the influence of drugs when police was called to the store parking lot because she wouldn’t get out of the car? How long is someone on probation for larceny and evading police?
If the second stripper didn’t her anything, why is the DA claiming that the “drunken frat boys” heard anything? If the crime didn’t happen, how could they hear anything?
Why are people willing to look at the arrest record of 15 members of the entire 47 member team for reasons why they might have done something, but not into the stripper’s arrest record for reasons why she made up the story.
The 911 caller about racial remarks identified a different house number, why is it being made to sound that it came from the lacrosse boys’ house?
FBI 8% false claims of rape is derived from cases that were admitted to be false by the person making the claim, the percentage of false claims are closer to 30%. Between 1980 to 2000 33% of “convicted” rapist were found to be the wrong person identified by the “victim”. How does this fit into the 8% or 2% figure of false accusations?
District Attorney Mike Nifong fueled the fires which tore the Durham community apart. The Duke lacrosse team claimed that no crime was committed, pictures prove the stripper was bruised before arriving at the party, the second stripper’s story coincided with the boys’ account of events, yet Nifong led a pack of wolves straight to the Duke campus to destroy these boys.
Although DNA voluntarily given by the lacrosse team doesn’t match any DNA found on the stripper’s body or clothes, gang threats against white students have already resulted and racial divides are even more polarized than ever before. Nifong’s desire for the spotlight will ripple through the community for years to come. District Attorney Mike Nifong should resign.
These boys are innocent — 1. Nifong is running scared. If he had anything big, he’d spill it. His desperation was obvious when he held that conference at the NCC University where he thought he was in friendly territory.
Nifong claims the boys are “stone walling”, but when the accusation was made, the police questioned the three boys who lived in the house for over six hours, not one asked for a lawyer. When the entire team was told they had to submit DNA samples, they didn’t call their parents or fight the warrant.
The boys cooperated completely. These aren’t the actions of guilty boys. Only when their parents witnessed the circus-like atmosphere created by District Attorney Mike Nifong, the boys were advised to remain quiet.
Nifong nationally proclaimed that he will indict the entire team for aiding and abetting. He doesn’t care whether anyone is innocent or guilty, or if he has to bulldoze over 50 boys to get to one. Nifong portrayed all of these boys as rapists while claiming that they’re hiding information because the only information they have is that the rape never occurred, and DNA evidence supports the boys’ story, and the second stripper coincides with the boys account of events, but it doesn’t matter.
Because of Nifong, these boys have already been convicted in the media. Their reputations destroyed as their names and pictures are widely distributed with hate slogans labeling them as rapist.
Nifong will get an indictment to avoid facing the racial tensions he stoked to near riot levels, then he will leave this “powder keg” to the next elected DA to handle the fallout, and when this case presents itself to be unfounded and accusations of “white privilege” force racial tensions to explode, I predict Mr. Nifong will be somewhere far far away on vacation.
When we think of a single mother, we picture a woman struggling to support herself and her children. Laura Grissim [Letters; April 14] plays on this stereotype to portray the Durham rape accuser/stripper as a stereotypical working single mom.
It’s amazing how just by claiming a person to be a “mother” puts a “halo” on her head. Ms. Grissom claims that some women have no other option to provide for herself and her children which paints a picture of a selfless martyr, but this is misleading especially regarding this particular “single mom”. This single mom and her children live with their grandfather so the threat of being homeless or hungry is unlikely. This single mom has been arrested in for larceny and evading police, which doesn’t fit the mold of “martyr”. This single mom arrived at the party inebriated and was found drunk and disorderly in a parking lot, but looking at this woman as an individual instead of a sexist stereotype reveals a more realistic picture of this single mom which dims her halo.
Ms. Grissom goes on to rants that criticizing this woman “hinges on blaming the victim”. This single mom is not a victim. This single mom is an “accuser”. There’s enough evidence to question her integrity and whether a crime actually occurred. I find it hypocritical that Ms. Grissom so easily gives this “single mom” the benefit of the doubt while condemning a group of boys who happen to be on a sports team. People should avoid stereotypes and focus on each individual, including the “accuser”, as a person.
The actions of District Attorney Mike Nifong have been reckless and irresponsible in playing out this case before the national media. This has inflamed racial stereotypes throughout Durham which makes it more important that everyone take a step back and let the police do their job. If this woman lied; thus exposing Nifong as a fool, then she should be prosecuted for this crime, which have destroyed these young boys’ lives and reputations. Being a “single mom” shouldn’t be an excuse to condone this type of behavior.
Rape shields were created in the 1970s to protect the alleged “victim” from having her reputation ruined by baseless assumptions, unfair judgments, public humiliation, and character assassinations, but any of this could describe what’s happening to every member of the lacrosse team.
Irresponsible “special interest groups” have held protests everyday holding the name and pictures of anyone on the lacrosse team, to having their pictures and hate slogans pasted all over school. The actions of these groups against these men are nothing short of harassment and unfair character assassination.
The boys are being tried in the national media before there is any charge are made. Nifong stated that someone else could have assaulted the 27 year old stripper, yet he publicly damned the men’s lacrosse team and only the men’s lacrosse team as gang rapist, and still not knowing whether or not the “alleged victim” was telling the truth, or if the three men sought are on the team, Nifong claims the team is stonewalling to protect its own.
In response, daily protest are held with hate comments made directly to the lacrosse teammates, pictures of the teammates with rape slogans are plastered all over Duke’s campus, and now gang members are driving by the east campus threatening students.
Nifong’s circus-like antics to perform for the national media has put the whole campus in danger.
Nifong proclaimed in the national media that the DNA sweep of 46 boys would find the guilty and clear the innocent. DNA tests prove that the boys of the lacrosse team were telling the truth, but Nifong wants to go ahead with the case only weeks before his election against a woman and a black man. There should be laws in place to prevent unscrupulous politician like District Attorney Mike Nifong from bulldozing over 47 innocent boys just to bask in the international media spot-light.
THe news that there’s no DNA evidense to link the boys to the stripper is not as curious as there’s no DNA to suggest a crime was ever cmmitted! Where’s her DNA?
Stripper claims: three men raped her on the bathroom rug,
Fact:
Stripper claim bruises were result of an attack from three boys:
Fact: Time-stamped photos prove stripper arrived bruised and cut while drunk.
Nifong stated that a condom was used, if this is true than where is the spermicidal lubricant evidence? Where are the condoms? Where are the condom wrappers? Where is the empty condom box?
If no DNA material were present on the stripper, than why were DNA samples taken? The District Attorney vigorously claimed that these DNA evidence will clear the innocent.
The second stripper stated that she didn’t notice any rape, and when they got back in the car the “accuser” didn’t mention anything about being rape.
We have to consider the fact that this may be a common “false accusation of rape”, and she must be prosecuted for the harm she’s done to these men and to the entire Duhram community.
I was surprise of how many false rape accusations have been made by several independent surveys reveal that 42% to approximately half of all accusations made are false. Most cases involve divorce battles involving the custody of children, some for revenge for withdraw of affection, monetary gains, an excuse for infidelity, or misidentification.
* According to the FBI, one of every 12 claims of rape filed in the United States are later deemed ‘unfounded,’ meaning the case was closed because the alleged victim recanted or because investigators found no evidence of a crime.
* Howard County Police classified one out of every four rape allegations as unfounded in 1990-91.
* The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers says around 600 teachers a year are falsely accused – a trebling since the 1989 Children’s Act.
* Citing a recent USA Today article, discussing the miracle of DNA and FBI studies of sexual assault suspects, DNA testing exonerated about 30% to 35% of the more than 4,000 sexual assault suspects on whom the FBI had conducted DNA testing over the past three years.
* Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin, in over 40% of the cases reviewed, the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994).
* 1985 the Air Force conducted a study of 556 rape accusations. Over 25% of the accusers admitted, either just before they took a lie detector test or after they had failed it, that no rape occurred.
* 1996 Department of Justice Report, of the roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases analyzed with DNA evidence over the previous seven years, 2,000 excluded the primary suspect, and another 2,000 were inconclusive.
* Linda Fairstein, who heads the New York County District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit. Fairstein, the author of Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape, says, “there are about 4,000 reports of rape each year in Manhattan. Of these, about 50% simply did not happen.”
Craig Silverman, a former Colorado prosecutor known for his zealous prosecution of rapists during his 16-year career, says that false rape accusations occur with “scary frequency.” As a regular commentator on the Bryant trial for It seems that every feminist wants thise stripper to have been raped because if she was, this is good as gold when political groups lobby the government for more money for women-only programs, but what feminist don’t want is to lime-light the problem of the flase accusations of rape that occurs more frequently that is known.