In the third and final part of this series I am going to look at what became known as the Duke Lacrosse Hoax. The facts of the case are somewhat less dramatic than was the reaction to it, however, as readers in Europe may not be as familiar with the case as those in America, In will start with a brief summary.
It all started at a spring break party arranged by members of the men's lacrosse team North Carolina's prestigious Duke university, on the evening of March 13 2006. Spring break parties take place at Universities and colleges across America at that time of year and are attended by students of both sexes and numerous racial groups. There are any number of web sites set up for the purpose of displaying pictures and videos of what goes on at these parties, I shall demure from linking to any out of consideration for the blood pressure of some of my readers, but it is safe to say that the antics can be quite lively.
There are very few such parties where, what we might consider to be America's somewhat draconian laws on under aged drinking are not widely broken. Many parties will arrange entertainment, which can include adult movies, and the hiring of male or female strippers, depending on the gender or sexual proclivities of those throwing the parties.
These are not events to which it would be wise to invite an elderly vicar or your maiden aunt from Rhyl, unless the old girl is particularly game. That said, in fairness it has to be noted such events are enjoyed by thousands upon thousands of healthy young Americans of all races, sexes and inclinations each year. However, acknowledging this fact was not a fairness which the US media or many left wing academics chose to grant to the Duke University men's lacrosse team.
The lacrosse team, had a reputation for lively behaviour and under aged drinking, but as I shall show later in this article, they were not the out of control louts which the local police, many of their university professors and national media sought to portray them. However, on that night two of the captains unwisely decided to include some entertainment at the party, by hiring some exotic dancers. One of them then telephoned an agency and booked two white strippers.
Despite the terms of the booking, the agency in fact sent two black women, one of whom would subsequently make the accusations which placed three young in dire peril.
Even though the dancers did not match the booking, the players paid them the $800 which had been agreed. Everyone then went into the lounge, where the dancers began to perform their “exotic dance”. After that, there is some debate as to what happened in the relatively short period during which the women were in the house which the team captains rented. It is claimed by many who were present that the woman who would later claim she was raped was somewhat incapacitated either by alcohol or narcotics, claims which are, to some extent, supported by
photographs taken at the time which do suggest that she may have been somewhat unstable on her feet.
The pictures are also revealing when one notes the posture of the lacrosse players, who appear to be sitting around politely watching the women dance. I don't know what you see, but I am certainly can not see the leering, jeering satyrs of popular legend which press reports later sought to evoke.
The women stopped dancing after approximately two to a maximum of three minutes, the second women later claimed that she had taken offence to a smutty comment made by one of the players, after which both women refused to continue dancing. Again there are differing accounts as to what occurred. Certainly some of the players, including two who would later be charged with rape, had found the event rather distasteful and decided to leave, whilst others felt they had been ripped off, and were concerned that they had paid out $800 for less than three minutes of entertainment.
The accuser later complained that her money was missing, and it is possible that one or more of the players, although not one who was later charged, took their money back. I have seen no convincing evidence either way, and it is certainly true that an extremely hostile Durham police Department never attempted to bring charges against anyone in this respect. I do not know what happened, and give notice here that I will not accept comments from anyone who claims that if any money was taken back, this either constituted a crime or was equivalent in law or malice to either gang rape or false rape allegations. There is no comparison, and anyone who argues otherwise, as some have tried, shames themselves.
As the women left the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd tempers became frayed and some sharp words were exchanged and one of the boys, again not one of those who later faced charges, made the mistake of using the infamous “N” word, although, he did not do so until after the second dancer had accused the players of being “Skinny dicked white boys”. Another player made a somewhat obscure comment asking the women to thank their grandparents for his “fine cotton shirt” which the media later determined to be a reference to slavery and therefore condemned the team to lasting allegations of racism.
Naturally a black woman in her thirties calling a teen aged white man a “Skinny dicked white boy” was not viewed in the same light.
What is now without doubt about the events at 619 N Buchanan Blvd on March 13 2006 is what did not happen. There was no violence, and most certainly there was no gang rape.
However, a few hours later, after the second dancer had called the police to remove the first dancer from her car, the first dancer made the first of a series of wildly varying allegations of various types of sexual assault by a regularly changing combination of white men, and the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax was born.
You will note, up to this point, I have chosen not to name any of those involved. Their names can be found via links in this article, and are easy to find, however, I don't consider their identities to be relevant to the points I am making, nor is it fair to name them again three and a half years after the event. The defendants names have been aired in public so often that they will forever be associated with a crime they did not commit, and I will not add to that injustice. Even the false accuser, who may well be mentally ill, is only relevant in so far as she made the allegations and those allegations were proved false, whether those allegations were made though malice or madness is of no significance.
What is of significance is how those who should have known better, those who's job it is to protect, teach or inform society dealt with her allegations, and what their motives were for doing so. To those people, the ones who exploited the lies of a mad woman for their own ends and for the sake of a political ideology, I will not extend the same right of anonymity.
Of those, the person usually held primarily responsible for the attempted railroading of the three members of the Duke Lacrosse team who were charged with a crime that never happened, was the local district attorney, Michael Nifong, who was subsequently
disbarred in June 2007 following a series of ethical and prosecutorial abuse he committed in relation to this case . These abuses included the issuing of numerous prejudicial, guilt presuming and misleading statements to the press regarding the accused, he effectively took control of the case, and allegedly persuaded the local Durham police to violate their own identification processes to assist the accuser in identifying lacrosse players as her attackers, after she had failed to do so on a number of occasions. (the police only included pictures of lacrosse players in the photographs shown to the accuser, and she was told this, so she knew there were no wrong answers).
Most serious of all, Nifong
conspired with the owner of a local laboratory to hide from the media, the court, and of course, the defence, the fact that although, as he did acknowledge, no DNA relating to any of the lacrosse players was found on the accuser, other DNA relating to at least five other unidentified males, not including her boyfriend, had been found in the woman's various body orifices and underwear.
This, of course was compelling evidence of innocence, especially as the accuser had claimed that her “attackers” did not use condoms, and that she had not had sex for at least a week before the “attack”. By seeking to hide it the Durham DA was guilty of serious misconduct. This led not only to his disbarment, but a prison sentence, although shockingly
only for one day readers can speculate quite how long he might have served had his misconduct put innocent non-white defendants at risk.
Nifong had his own motives for what he did. As District Attorney, he was shortly to face an election, which, before the dancer made her allegations, he, as a white man, was not expected to win. To be re-elected as DA in Durham he needed the support of the large black community, who had long resented the, as they saw it, “privileged” white Duke students on their doorstep. As soon as the allegations surfaced, this community were demanding arrests, and Nifong not only gave them arrests, but he also gave them plenty of guilt presuming, anti white rhetoric to send them to bed happy.
Amongst his statements to the press he said "
In this case, where you have the act of rape -- essentially a gang rape -- is bad enough in and of itself, but when it's made with racial epithets against the victim, I mean, it's just absolutely unconscionable"; and "
The contempt that was shown for the victim, based on her race was totally abhorrent. It adds another layer of rephrensibleness (sic), to a crime that is already reprehensible." Despite the fact that, within days he must have realised that the accusers claims were, at best, questionable, he continued to call the players “
hooligans” and went on to state, "
The thing that most of us found so abhorrent, and the reason I decided to take it over myself, was the combination of gang-like rape activity accompanied by the racial slurs and general racial hostility."
Clearly intending to play the race card to the bitter end he stated "I
'm not going to let Durham's view in the minds of the world to be a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl." Attending a meeting at the predominantly black North Carolina State University, where feelings were already running high about the case, Nifong placed himself squarely on the side of the black community by announcing "
I assure you by my presence here that this case is not over."
All this was said, you will remember, about a crime which never occurred, and which Nifong must have known probably never occurred. He certainly must have known there was no evidence it occurred, apart from the accuser's ever changing account of events. At one point The dancer claimed she had been attacked by 20 men, at others she said five and later three men had raped her. In a further account she said the second dancer had assisted in the rape, whilst at another time she alleged that the second dancer had also been assaulted.
Also, before the police changed their identification procedures she had continued to identify a player who had been many miles from Durham on the night of the attack, as one of her assailants. In addition the dancer had a record of instability, and had made similar claims against a group of black men only a few years previously. She was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the credible witness upon who's testimony a prosecutor could safely base such inflammatory statements, yet the DA continued to make them.
I need not tell you what would have happened had a public official attempted to whip up racial animosity against blacks within a white community. However, no American politician has lost out from playing to black racism in the last 50 years and naturally Nifong romped home with a commanding percentage of the vote in the election held that November.
To find further evidence of the Durham electorate's racial loyalty one need look no further than the fact that even after a disgraced Nifong had been forced to stand down, and the accused players officially exonerated, the people of Durham went on to
elect Tracey Cline, Nifong's black assistant DA to replace him, despite her own questionable involvement in the same prosecution.
It was not just the black community which behaved dishonourably or in a manner open to question. They were motivated by bigotry, racial animosity and. like Nifong, self interest, the behaviour of others was less easy to categorise.
Within hours of the dancer's claims becoming public, across America, it was as if a switch had been turned on and people from first Durham and then wider America began en masse to behave like pre-programmed jihadis reacting to a stimulus planted deep within a psyche. It was as if a million secret sleeper cells had awoken to a long promised event and were responding as they had been taught to do.
Durham and the Duke university campus were witness to candle lit gatherings attended by hundreds who chanted “We believe her, we believe her, we believe her”, Websites were set up declaring solidarity with the accuser and belief in her claims. Chat rooms and message boards buzzed with people convinced of the players guilt, and accusations of “racism” aimed at anyone cautioning against a rush to judgement.
Like in some over imaginative liberal's pre-civil rights fantasy, but with white targets, groups of people, calling themselves “concerned members of the Duke and Durham community”, but whom history will forever call “The pot-bangers”, and who's activities can be viewed on You tube
here and
here arrived outside the team captain's house. Singing songs of solidarity with the false accuser and banging a variety kitchen implements together. They demanded immediate confessions from the players, whilst simultaneously insisting they should be castrated and, presumably, raped, assuming I have correctly interpreted the words “
Measure for Measure” emblazoned upon their banners.
In addition, a flyer, closely resembling a wanted poster, bearing the faces of the members of the lacrosse team was printed and pasted on trees and fences across the Duke campus and surrounding neighbourhood.
This was by no means the first time that similar allegations had been made against a team of American sportsmen, including previous charges of interracial rape, yet these had never led to similar scenes. This was however the first time that the allegations had been made by a black woman against a group of white sportsmen.
This, of course, was the point. Clearly sensing that the teachable moment which would support them well into retirement had arrived, no less that 88 members of the Duke University faculty, mostly professors within the “humanities” departments, such as Women's studies and African American history, came out in support of the protesters. They jointly
published an advertisement in the Duke University magazine entitled “What does a Social Disaster sound like?” in which they expressed their outrage at “what had been done to the young woman” and thanked the potbangers for “not waiting” (presumably not waiting for guilt to be establish or paying any heed to such niceties as a presumption of innocence).
Here is a quote from the infamous advert, which was, you will recall drafted by salaried professors from one of America's most prestigious universities:
"We are listening to our students. We're also listening to the Durham community, to Duke staff, and to each other. Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday [sic] now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment's extraordinary spotlight what they live with everyday [sic]…. These students are shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman and to themselves."
The advert then went on included a number of anonymous quotes allegedly from non-white students detailing their experience of racism on Duke campus.
It has been suggested that the group of 88 rushed to get the advert published in order that it would have maximum impact before the DNA results were revealed. Presumably they feared that, as proved to be the case, the results would be favourable towards the players. Whether or not this was true,
Wahneema Lubiano Associate Professor, Literature and African and African-American Studies, who organised the advertisement, which she later acknowledged would be “a streak through the heart of the lacrosse team” (whom she termed “perfect offenders”) gave some signatories
less than six hours to decide whether they would put their name, and, as such their departments credibility behind the advert.
These academics were able to ignore due process and the presumption of innocence, whilst attacking their own students, in the furtherance of of their questionable pedagogical agendas, with impunity, as the Duke administration and its Principle,
Richard Broadhead seemed more committed to Political correctness and placating radical pressure groups than protecting the young people in its charge.
I do not have time here to go into detail regarding the behaviour of the Duke administration, or of the Durham NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured people) and the inaccurate, misleading and guilt alleging statement regarding the case on their website. The patently false information put out by the Durham Crime Stoppers group, stating incorrectly that there was strong evidence of rape, and also creating a myth, which was to continue throughout the case that the players were refusing to cooperate. Meanwhile an analysis of the false rumours, originating from at least one nurse,
Tara Levicy, at Duke hospital that the accuser had sustained serious vaginal and anal injuries, whereas only a mild swelling and some evidence of thrush had been detected, would require a deeper investigation into pure human malice and the radical feminist mindset than I am inclined to go at this time. For those who wish to read more about these, I have listed a variety of sources at the bottom of this posting where further details of these can be found.
Whilst there, anyone who still believes that the law will protect the innocent, may wish examine the behaviour of much of the Durham judiciary, with particular reference to a certain Judge
Ronald L Stevens who presided over a number of the initial hearings, and who, many feel should have stood next to the rogue prosecutor at his disciplinary hearing. That Stevens, among other things, allowed members of the
New Black Panthers, who had arrived in town with the speed of flies to a road kill, to shout threats at one of the defendants in his own court, gives a good indication as to where that hanging judge's allegiance lay.
Needless to say, there were many many forces ranged against the three young white men charged with rape, and all those forces were desperate for them to be guilty, or at least, for them to be convicted. Indeed, for very, very many of those forces, the young men's guilt or innocence, was of less importance than the symbolism of a conviction. The attitude of many was summed up by one North Carolina Central University student who commented "
whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past."
(Sotto voce: Of course, given that, as I indicated in a previous part of this essay, current
US Crime statistics show that black men in America are over one thousand times
more likely to rape white women than white men are to rape black women unless there has been a complete 180 degree change since “the past” one has to question whether “things that happened in the past” actually happened.)
Among those who clearly did believe that “things that happened in the past” really did happen, who were pre-disposed to believe every allegation, and who positively drooling blood with delight at the prospect of sending three young white men to prison were, of course, our old friends the media, in this instance the US media. If you think our media in Britain have drunk too long at the fountain of politically correct fibs and fantasies, you haven't seen anything to compare with the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek and the New York Times.
In direct contrast to the news black out which the entire US national news media applied to the racially motivated gang rape and
murder of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian in Knoxville some nine months later the press descended upon Durham like an army equipped with camera trucks, satellite phones and large expense accounts. TV anchors and on the ground reporters grasped the story with relish, but there was only one scenario they wished to present and that involved white male privilege, black female victimhood and white racial and sexual violence. They had already effectively declared the outcome, and you can not believe how much the media, and their cheering supporters in chat rooms, message boards, and college staff rooms across America wanted that woman to have been raped by those men.
The press applied all their text book disinformation tricks, such as, as I have described before, what Ann Coulter termed the “lie of omission”, for instance by not reporting any uncomfortable facts they learned about the accuser, or indeed any evidence of good character on the part of the defendants. Another variation on the lie of omission is the “ignore its been disproved” trick, seen again later that year in the
reporting of events at Jena, a small town in Louisiana, and used with gusto by those reporting on the lacrosse case. Some examples of the “ignore its been disproved” trick are as follows:
1) After leaving the lacrosse captain's house, and for reasons which remain unclear, the second dancer made a 911 call to the police, claiming that she and a female friend had been passing the house, when a group of white males ran out and started shouting racial slurs at them. There is some speculation as to why she made this call, and some have suggested that she was covering up the sting operation, which a number of the players suspected that the dancers were playing on them, whatever her motive, the 911 call was released by the police and became hot news for a few days.
Shortly afterwards the second dancer admitted publicly that
it was she who made the call, and that the event had never happened. However, that did not stop press from continuing to report that the players had racially abused passers by.
2) On the same lines, numerous legends began to circulate regarding the alleged behaviour of the lacrosse team prior to the events of March 13, the team it was was said had a long record of racist and sexist abuse and of anti social acts. As a result Duke arranged for an investigation to be conducted by an eminent and well respected African American Duke professor of Law
James Coleman who convened a committee and
compiled a report on the team's general behaviour. Contrary to the legends,
the Coleman committee report found no evidence of either racism or sexism, and rather than anti-social behaviour, it found some examples of rowdy behaviour, however the worst of this involved an incident where one player was punished for “throwing water”, suggesting the actions of lively, even mischevious, young men, rather than the swaggering, racist elitists they were being painted
At worst, the Coleman report found that the players frequently broke the laws on under aged drinking, but this was by no means an unusual misdemeanour in America, especially in states like North Carolina, where it is illegal to drink under the age of 21.
As the report did not produce the results the media wanted, its findings were widely ignored, and the discredited legends continued to be reported as fact. To this day you will hear you will hear commentators, who should know better, or who DO know better, repeating these same allegations even when grudgingly admitting the rape never took place.
The famous New York Times was amongst the many offenders continuing to run dozens of heavily biased and guilt presuming articles almost to the point where the case, and their reporting of it, imploded in front of them.
Times Sports reporter Selena Roberts was guilty of some of the more intemperate, hate infused, and prejudiced reporting in the early stages. Amongst other things Roberts asserted that "something happened on March 13" without acknowledging that this was taking the unproven charges of the prosecution and announcing them as fact. Furthermore, Roberts
published false information about the case through the Times, such as "Players have been forced to give up their DNA, but to the dismay of investigators, none have come forward to reveal an eyewitness account." In fact, the captains' March 28, 2006 statement and the defense attorneys' subsequent press conference both described the captains' cooperation with police, and both occurred before Roberts penned her column.
The Times never ran a correction. (
Source Wikipedia)
Worse even than Roberts, were that possible, was her colleague
Duff Wilson, who was to become the main Times reporter covering the case and who, in a 5,700 word page 1 article published on August 25 2006, claimed that the prosecutors had strong evidence to continue pursuing the case against the three defendants, when, in fact no such evidence existed. Wilson did not admit that he report was primarily based on hand written notes
prepared, from memory, by one policeman written months after the event, and which conveniently fudged or amended inconsistencies .Some may ask why should he admit it?, the policeman's notes told the story he wanted to report.
There are many other examples of the one sided and distorted manner in which the US media handled this case, and how differently they handled it from many of the other similar cases which has arisen over the years. However, this essay is already over long, so I shall restrict myself to commenting on one individual media personality. That individual is ex-prosecutor and legal commentator, turned TV host with her own TV show, CNN's Nancy Grace.
Staring fiercely into the camera like
Perseus's recurring nightmare, in a peroxide helmet which
Brunhilde would envy, Grace is a media phenomenon, credited with driving at least one interviewee
to suicide. She is an ex-prosecutor, with a feminist ideology and little tolerance of such concepts as due process and the presumption of innocence. As a TV inquisitor she makes our own Television bullies like
Jeremy Paxman, let alone
Anne Robinson, appear shy and almost self-effacing.
Nancy Grace approached the Duke lacrosse case in somewhat the same manner that
Pamela Voorhees (mother of Jason) might approach a wounded Fraternity pledge and emerged blood red on tooth and finely manicured claw.
Instead of seeking to describe the indescribable, I recommend that you watch this person in action, by clicking on the following links:
In
the second clip from an edition of the Today Show, aired immediately after the North Carolina Attorney General declared the accused Lacrosse players were innocent of all charges, and in which the usually highly selective Jon Stewart goes some way towards redeeming himself with a brilliant expose of Nancy Grace's behaviour. The clip is highly recommended, not only for Stewart's humour, but because it shows various further examples of Grace's guilt assuming and quite outrageous behaviour.
The frightening thing about Nancy Grace is that, although she may appear extreme, she actually is not. She is merely a slightly more brutish example of how the US media in general approached this case. Many of her colleagues may have appeared more rational and pragmatic, but, with a few honourable exceptions, such as the late
Ed Bradley, an African American TV journalist. whose
CBS 60 Minutes show first raised doubts about the case in the public mind, their attitudes and belief's were no different. Their assumptions about the players were identical to hers, and so was their desire (instinct?) to destroy them, and the objectives behind their reporting. The only difference was that the street thug beneath Nancy Grace's caked on mascara made her less able to hide that truth.
The media and the venomous coalition of forces who gathered around Durham North Carolina, intent upon sacrificing three innocent young men in order to prove true the lies they have told us for the last 40 years have not gone away, and they will strike again, and this time their aim will be even more deadly.
When the hoax fell apart, it exposed quite how flawed and quite how outrageous it had been, because of that, few realise quite how close it came to succeeding.
Had it not been for one lawyer with a text book on DNA spending hour upon hour pouring over page after page of raw data, Nifong's conspiracy to hide the results might never have been exposed, would an overworked public defender have the time to do that? Indeed, had the accused not been the “Perfect offenders” as Duke professor Wahneema Lubiano had called them, they would not have been able to pay the lawyers who proved their innocence, something which almost bankrupted one of these so called, “privileged families”.
Had the players not been so attractive and so obviously innocent their plight may not have inspired so many bloggers to keep the spotlight on the case. Had they had consensual sex with the accuser, and left DNA, or had she been more credible, the outcome could have been very different indeed and the defendants could now have been into the first or second year of a thirty year prison sentence, which, for a young white man in an American prison is a very cruel and unnatural punishment.
Be under no illusion however, this is not over. The forces which grasped hold of Nifong's dirty little conspiracy and sought to drive it into the show trial which the Duke lacrosse would have been, made a huge mistake, however, they know it and they have learnt from it.
They know the accused were too perfect, the accuser too unbalanced and the prosecutor was a sociopath, they will not make that mistake again, but they will try again because they have no option.
Black men will not stop raping white women, the figures show that thousands and thousands of them do so every year. As diversity is forced on more and more areas it will happen more and more and it will be less difficult to hide. They need that balancing prosecution. The public are stupid, but they are not that stupid, they become less likely to believe in all the white rapists in the TV cop shows if their own daughter, and the girl across the street have been raped by a black man.
Other agendas, and careers, are at stake as well, how can tenured academics continue to claim salaries for teaching their students how white males oppress black women without eventually having to produce a practical example. They only need one, which can become the textbook example ignoring all others, but that one case has to happen.
How can TV producers continue to produce Bizarro World like shows Law and Order Special Victims. Or CSI Miami without events in the real world occasionally reflecting what they portray.
There is only so long that the media can continue to create the illusion of a an unending series of white hate crimes by omitting the word “black” from reports like “The Hispanic victim was attacked by a gang of ##### men” and deleting the word “Hispanic” from reports like “The black victim was attacked by a gang of ######## men”
There is an ideological industry at stake and in need of a high profile balancing prosecution.
However, the next time the defendants will be less attractive, they will be less wealthy and less able to defend themselves, but no less white. They will have have at least touched the woman, she will be credible and there will be DNA. Just wait and see.
And the same will happen in Britain because the same forces are at work here.
All demagogues require show trials to support their social engineering, and our demagogues are no different.
____________________________________________________________
Notes:
The Duke Lacrosse case is an event which every white person with a son should be aware of, I have merely scratched the surface of what took place. For those wishing to know more, I would recommend the following publications:
Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson
It's Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case and the Lives It Shattered by Mike Pressler and Don Yaeger
A Rush to Injustice: How Power, Prejudice, Racism, and Political Correctness Overshadowed Truth and Justice in the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Nader Baydoun, and R. Stephanie Good
A trawl through the archives of the following Websites would also be informative:
Durham in Wonderland,
LieStoppers,
Talkleft
(A significant amount of information, documentation and photographs can also be found in the Reference section at the
Duke Lacrosse case discussion board - However, visitors should be warned that it is an interactive board where they may encounter aggressively expressed alternative view points, and some obscene imagery)
Note #2
In
part one of this series of essays I referred to Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing, I see from
this news story that the truth may not be as it first appeared.
