I am making it my personal mission to get the word out this terrible story. 46 members of the Duke Lacrosse team are taking DNA tests after some of the players were accused of gang raping a woman who they invited to be a dancer at a party. I also don’t want people to think about this story as a gender issue, but as incident that reveals how racism, sexism, and classism intersected to make this young woman particularly vulnerable to a sexual assault. If you read this report from ABC News you will hear very little about race. However, if you this story you get a better idea of what most likely went on. A group of young wealthy White men felt that it was ok to assault this woman, raping her and yelling racial slurs at her. This should be blowing up in the blogosphere folks. This is also one of those “if this had happen to a White woman would we have already heard about it” stories.
Here’s what the local paper said happened,
The woman who says she was raped last week by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team thought she would be dancing for five men at a bachelor party, she said Friday. But when she arrived that night, she found herself surrounded by more than 40.
Just moments after she and another exotic dancer started to perform, she said, men in the house started barking racial slurs. The two women, both black, stopped dancing.
“We started to cry,” she said. “We were so scared.”
The women subsequently left the party, but decided to come back after one of the men apologized. When the women went back into the party, “Two males then pulled the victim into a bathroom as three men sexually assaulted her for an approximate 30-minute time period, according to the warrant,” according to the student newspaper
The woman was able to get away and call the police, and she was subsequently admitted to the hospital. When the police came to the house to investigate, the men refused to cooperate, and now the police are testing 46 out of 47 of the men on the team ( I saw one report saying that the victim’s cell phone, purse, and an acrylic fingernail were found at the house when they finally got in.). I understand that these young men are legally innocent until proven guilty, but the evidence in this case seems very strong.
On a more positive note, the student paper is reporting that about 250 students and community members have been protesting for 3 days outside of the house where the incident happened. It seems that the house has receive complaints from neighbors in the past.
The young woman is a student at North Carolina Central University (a historically Black University), and she is the mother of two. She was working for the escort service as a dancer to support her family and pay for college.
The race/class/gender dynamics of this whole case are really scary, and they reveal a great deal about our power structure in this country. This young woman ended up in the vulnerable position of being a sex worker because she was trying to better her family and her education. The two young women left the party after the racial slurs began and they feared for their safety, but I can’t help wondering if they were thinking about how they were going to pay their bills or feed their kids when they went back in, something most of these young men don’t even have to think about. I wonder if these guys were thinking about how much power they had over this young women when they yelled racist slurs and when they physically and sexually assault this women? I also wonder if those guys who remained silent were more concerned about protecting their buddies than stopping this terrible assault. How much do they think this woman’s life is worth?
One of the people quoted in the student paper said that the school spends so much time protecting students from the people in the community, but in this case clearly shows how the people in the community also need to be protected from the students.
I encourage people to put up the story on their blogs, and put pressure on the University to investigate the team and level some sort of disciplinary actions, and of course this legal system also needs to do its part to put these men behind bars. I think one way people in the blogosphere may be able to help, in addition to agitating for the full force of the law to come down on these men, is by setting up some sort of fund to help this young woman pay for college (if anybody knows how this can be done). (Thanks to Baft Rage for the heads up on this.)
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I heard about this story on The Abram’s Report on MSNBC and his big complaint was that the ACLU wasn’t in uproar because all of the men who were asked to submit DNA were white while, he claims, in other cases, the ACLU protested when several black suspects were asked to submit DNA. He was totally unconcerned with the actual crime that was committed.
This probably won’t get a lot of press. They were women of color. Their occupation and their race is pretty much a societal ‘ok go get ‘im boys’. The silence of the athletic directors tells much as well. The press will make some coverage, the university will make a lot hoo-ha about it for awhile, but the public and the university will put it behind them as the white male pride hire their star attorneys and the prosecution offers up a poorly executed prosecution. They will serve little time and come out with goods jobs and futures in the end, albeit more convinced than ever that they did nothing wrong and ready to join the ranks of white male upper middle class priviledge.
The girls will drop out of college, get low paying jobs, maybe lose their kids because the defendants will stop at nothing to harrass and intimidate. Their future is much less certain than the boys’ above.
Race, Class, Gender, and Rape
http://asher813.blogspot.com/2006/03/race-class-gender-and-rape.html
posted on http://www.democraticunderground.com and you are right, it won’t get alot of coverage since the perps are rich white men and the victim is black. Makes me sick.
15 players had prior charges
The prosecutor seems to have his head in the right place:
If she lost four fingernails scratching an assailant or assailants, as the story says, there should be physical evidence that both supports identification and refutes a consent defense. The question is, will a Durham jury throw wealthy white athletes in jail where they belong?
Rachel, I wanted to pick one nit: you call the company this woman worked for an “escort service.” That was not a term that the student paper used and I’m not sure if it’s your word or the term another story used. However, as far as the linked material provides, she was a dancer, not a prostitute. Neither negates her absolute right to say “no” at any time. But the defense will almost certainly use patriarchal attitudes about sex work and consent to try to get the jury to believe that the consent of a sex-worker is unimportant. I think that implying (unintentionally) that she was an escort has the effect of helping them out.
Some background info: Durham is not Chapel Hill. It is not a picturesque southern town. It is a mostly black, working class, “tobacco warehouse” kind of place. Duke University is a bit of an oasis community — think Yale — walled off from its surroundings by some savvy land acquisitions. So a jury in Durham is unlikely to be all white, and very unlikely to be populated by the children of privilege who by and large make up the Duke student body.
I don’t remember the lacrosse team, but teams develop a group personality. The Duke basketball team is run like a 19th century British naval enterprise but some teams are enabled by coaches and ADs (remember the UVM hockey team that caused the school to ban the sport for several years, or even worse, the Maryland basketball team where the coach had a SWAT team approach for “dealing with” the women who were assaulted by players)?
The University isn’t usually guilty of protecting miscreants so much as of doing nothing to stop them, by overlooking smaller offenses and not meting out intermediate punishments. For instance, if someone is found to be driving drunk on campus the university doesn’t do anything, doesn’t even take away parking privileges. That sort of thing.
And as you might have guessed, it’s really hard to be a black student at Duke.
I hope the police are able to crack the code of silence. Threatening to prosecute bystanders is probably a tactic for gaining greater cooperation to go after those who directly committed the assault. I am very gratified to see public protests. Most of the time there’s just a lot of seething, among other students and professors as well as the community.
Correction: Rachel, I read the linked material more closely, and the news & observer story said that she had worked as an escort with an escort service.
I’m sure that the defense will try to smear her because she apparently turned some tricks to make ends meet. Bastards. I don’t care if she shows up with the explicit understanding that she’s going to have sex with these guys; she’s still a human being and she still gets to say she doesn’t want to do it.
This also leaves the rapists and their aiders and abetters open to charges of soliciting prostitution. I’m a Swedish Model proponent (prosecute johns, not sex workers); this looks like a perfect place to make that happen by prosecutorial discretion. This poor woman has been through enough, and the DA can easily justify to the public a decision not to charge her. He can, however, charge the guys at the party for soliciting prostitution.
It’s an indictment of our culture that a woman with the determination to go to school with two kids at home also has to work in the sex industry to find the money to do it.
Here’s my post on it.
Jesus. This is just disgusting. Good on her for reporting it.
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I’m a grad student at Duke. The campus women’s groups are already pretty active and they’ve really swung into action. I didn’t see it linked previously, but a blog has been set up to keep track of the story.
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hydropsyche, thanks for the info – I’ve linked the blog
What struck me is that the two women didn’t have a ‘bouncer’ with them in case of trouble–and that, to me, means that they were very much economically vulnerable, and weren’t able to hire protection. Which is likely why they came back. Don’t think these assholes were unaware of that, either.
I’m so glad that she was brave enough to come forward, and I hope that the DNA results unequivocally nail the scumbags who violated her.
“This probably won’t get a lot of press. They were women of color.”
I think to the contrary. The town is pissed. Royally. And we’ve been pissed at the lacrosse team players and coach for the last ten years — even though the players obviously rotate out after 4 years. The team is notorious for it’s disruptive behavior in the neighborhoods around Duke. I lived across from the main lacrosse house for 7 years — and I can no longer count my calls to 911. In fact, a call I made a few years back resulted in 67 citations for underage drinking — the coach didn’t bat an eye. Similarly, I know that at one point, campus women were aware of sexual assault and harassment by lacrosse players. The house they lived in was repeatedly toilet papered — and once, upon seeing the black-clad women tp-ing the house I asked why. Their reply: to warn other undergraduate women that a woman had been assualted while at a lacrosse party.
The Univ. has always rather palidly responded to the actions of the lacrosse team (and other student partiers). At one party many moons ago, there were so many students at a lacrosse party that they spilled out of the house, into the yard, and out into the street. It was 1:30 a.m. I saw two campus police across the street from the party (on campus property) and approached them about the nuisance. Their response: Oh, it isn’t on school property, we can’t do anything. [even though the partying students were less than 20 ft away.] They went on further: it’s probably all just freshman getting used to the college life… [admitting that underage students were being served].
So, yeah. The Univ. reaction will be bleak and male oriented.
The community, however will not let this rest, and the DA has a particularly bloodthirsty look in his eye. He wants not only to prosecute the direct rape, but kidnapping charges, the strangulation charges, and he is looking into charging the other 28-30 men with aiding and abetting the crime.
Myself — eh, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. thinking about the powder keg these boys set off. It’s a slow burner; but there is so much frustration from the community with this crowd that this cannot be hidden or blown over. I also know that the folks that live in the neighborhoods around Duke are progressive or liberal and really have no tolerance for privileged horseshit like this. Similarly, when the news trickles into Walltown, the black punks are sure to make these white boys aware of their presence.
[FWIW, I served as the block captain for our neighborhood association when living across from the lacrosse team. We formed the association primarily because we needed a concerted effort to keep Duke undergrads in check and responsible for their behaviors — to the end that Duke finally bought the rental houses that students have been historically renting out as party houses, and will in turn sell to Duke employees as non-commercial (non-rental) properties. There is just so much history here that this will not die out.]
She is black (and living in Durham), a single mother, and trying to put herself through college. The men at the party also robbed her. Something had to motivate her enough to override her original fear of these men.
QGrrl, at some point University counsel is going to realize that the university’s interests are adverse to the students. The University owns the property, it rents it out, it has no doubt become aware of illegal activity taking place there and did nothing to stop it. Legal liability of landlords is tricky to prove and should not be assumed, but it is this sort of ambiguous situation that will ultimately cause a light bulb to go off in someone’s head that the University is itself at risk if it continually enables loutish behavior by student tenants of university property that devolves into flagrant law breaking. This is what happened at UVa when it dawned on the university that by “vouching” for off campus frat houses with the city fire authorities it could be exposing itself to serious liability if any of the numerous fire traps being protected went up in smoke. Within a very short period of time frat houses were condemned as unlivable and frats forced to come up with plans and financing to remedy the situation.
IMHO, if 46 out of 47 lacrosse players won’t even cooperate with the police it’s time to terminate the lacrosse team and its coach and start over at leisure.
Done. Here is my post.
Something had to motivate her enough to override her original fear of these men.
Agreed. It’s just that it’s usual practice for strippers going to parties to have an ‘escort’–and the fact that these women apparently didn’t is NOT to say that they were to blame or were foolish, it suggests to me that they didn’t have the money to do so.
Thanks for all the info on the Duke situation.
To be clear, the University just negotiated the sale of these properties in February of this year. The property in question here is either a Guy Solie managed property or managed by Bob Schmitz (which means that a third party actually owns the property — typically an absentee landlord). In NC, leases do not terminate if a property changes owners mid-lease.
Interestingly enough, this is why the lacrosse team house and other party houses are off campus — the University did not want the liability for underage drinking, etc. The neighborhood associations surrounding Duke have long pressed for Duke to build houses on campus for these special interest groups, to include fraternities and sororities. Duke has refused — all the while tightening their stance on drinking on campus, which has resulted in students moving off campus to drink and party. The slum lords in the area capitalize on these students and have specifically targeted their properties as “party houses.”
I myself do not find the University particularly culpable, but I would like them to grow a backbone and admit that the students enrolled at the university are problematic and routinely engaging in criminal activity.
Slightly off-topic but also not, Portland’s lacrosse team the Lumberjacks currently have a 4-story high advertisement of a blonde woman wearing only a Lumberjacks jersey near a major bridge. She is lifting the crotch-skirting jersey and her look matches the beckoning ad text, “Who wants some?”
Most days the rampant rape culture here slides off my time-thickened back, but knowing about this particular gang rape then seeing that building-sized promotion of rape culture to advertise a male lacrosse team, the hurt went like a barbed hook into me and it hasn’t let go all week.
Qgrrl, the University is probably not legally liable, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the university is not culpable. Think about it — Who funds the lacrosse team and the scholarships that go to players on the team? Doling out the goodies in spite of the ssaults, drunkenness, etc. tells you what you need to know about Duke. Like alot of other organizations and individuals called to account, the only thing you can really count on them to be sorry for is getting caught. I hear you about keeping the drunks off campus. When I was at Duke, it was sued by no fewer than three families for damages arising out of injuries to inebriated students that occurred on campus. One was med mal, but the others were in loco parentis type suits.
Ugh. Samantha, I hate that fucking sign/board. That’s the same spot that previously had that noxious “power drink” ad with a giant bikini-clad babe on her (parted) knees. It’s nice to know that ClearChannel cares so much about family values in the advertising spaces they have around our fair city.
Rachel:
I think they’d have to have seen her as human first, which is obviously a major stumbling block right there. Shit. >:
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“The men at the party also robbed her.”
Raped, beaten, strangled and robbed…does anybody else think this sounds like a scene from Grand Theft Auto? After a “player” in the game has sex with a prostitute, he can beat her up, take his money back and kill her.
Amp or Rachel, could you please delete my comment #30 (and this one). It belongs over on the gender-role thread, I don’t want to derail the discussion here.
Hi, Rachel–Just want to let you know that I’ve posted about this over at my place. I tried to send a trackback, but couldn’t get it to work.
Thanks so much for getting the word out on this!
As of 8:23 tonight, the Duke rape story is on the front page on yahoo.com, right below the dead Tennessee minister guy. The assumption that this won’t get a lot of press might be premature.
The Yahoo story (which is the AP story that will get reprinted everywhere), clearly addresses the race and class issues.
“No one has been charged in the case, which has roiled the campus, raised racial tensions and heightened antagonism between the affluent students at Duke, which costs about $43,000 a year, and the city of Durham, which has a large population of poor people and is about evenly divided between white and black.”
Richard, I think Rachel’s point–that there was a significant time lapse between the incident itself and the reaction of the national, mainstream media–still stands.
Thanks for all of the links and updates folks. I hope Richard’s point is true. I hope it gets the attention it deserves. It is currently on Rita Cosby as I write. Quite frankly, I agree about being a bit premature, but I also very purposely said this to challenge people in the mainstream media. Traditionally, they haven’t covered these kind of stories.
Many in the academic world know of Pres Brodhead’s stature and integrity from his years at Yale. I can’t think of a better leader to be presiding over such and incredible nightmare on so many levels. He is currenly being criticized for not acting swiftly enough, but I ask that the community give him a chance once the law enforcement investigation reconciles the disparate stories and formally files charges. One wonders why such behavior was tolerated under previous administrations as a local paper detailed yesterday that 15 of the 47 players had racked up violations of the law during their time in Durham. There are also rumblings that one of the players was involved in an SAT cheating scandal with other lacrosse players at a previous school.
The kicker is this essay on behavior of some team members this past Saturday, yes, after the hellstorm had come to roost. Stupidity, arrogance? You decide.
Fortunately, the strong community is reaching out to NC Central University and using an already-planned rally to bring an end to sexual violence – I should put this on my own blog but I thought that you might appreciate it being here:
“Wednesday
March 29, 2006
7:00 pm
Take Back the Night – Rally, March, and Speak Out @ Duke University
This event is free and open to the public – participation by the local Durham community is welcomed and encouraged.
Take Back the Night is a rally, march, and speak out to honor survivors and unite men and women in their struggle to end sexual violence. Participants march from the East Campus to West Campus, gathering in front of the Chapel for a speak out. Survivors, friends of survivors, and others are encouraged to speak if they desire.
Please join us as we come together as a community to unite against sexual violence. The rally will begin in the main quad on Duke’s East Campus (on the central field between Lilly Library and the East Campus Marketplace).
Invitation has been extended to students at NCCU and flyers were distributed at their campus this afternoon. Please forward this announcement widely to any other community organizations – a large community showing would make a strong statement in opposition to sexual violence. This event was already planned by the Duke Women’s Center prior to the lacrosse team situation coming to light, but it is a prime opportunity to speak out on this issue and will recieve lots of media coverage. Please come out!”
I’ll keep y’all posted as to when a legal relief fund is established for the victim. Thank you for publicizing this story – it is an embarrassing and tragic mark on the people of a great city and a great university, but these boys do not represent what 99.99% of us down here stand for.
By the time I went to bed last night, this story was getting fairly heavy coverage on Fox and MSNBC and was in the CNN trailer. It was also on ABC News on my car radio this morning, where they had a clip of a Duke U. official announcing the suspension of the entire team. Let’s hope this story continues to get at least as much attention as Natalie Halloway.
Not even the outbreak of World War III would deserve that much attention.
Last night while reading the online edition of The New York Times –
I spotted two articles about the case; one was an AP story and one was apparently by Times reporters or stringers, but both of them got fairly prominent placement in the Sports headlines and such.
These links are probably behind the Times subscription wall, but surely someone else here can give the workarounds for reading it free.
Rape Probe Grounds Duke’s Lacrosse Team
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-Duke-Lacrosse-Investigation.html
and
Rape Allegation Against Athletes Is Roiling Duke
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/sports/29duke.html
I am seething with rage because of this story. I don’t know what’s the worst part – the rape by three men, or the fact that so many men did nothing to stop it. I hope the DA prosecutes every single one of them, as he has said he will.
They were suspended yes, but not because of the rape charges and their lack of cooperation, but because they were *busted* for underage drinking, solicitation of a prostitute and something else I believe.
Like someone said further up thread: ditch them all and start over. You participate in something as heinous as this, you pay the consequence.
Rachel: Thanks for writing on this. I’ve started a sub-blog Justice4TwoSisters http://justice4twosisters.blogspot.com, after posting about it on my “Under the Dryer” blog, to serve as a noise-raiser and watchdog site in the blogger community on this case. Noise level needs to stay high lest this be characterized, as Ruth Sheehan News and Observer columnist, said, as “a frat party that got out of hand” and the racial slurs become “just jokes”. Please feel free to link to it and we will do the same here. Much respect.
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This situation is apalling, and needs to be investigated, and we need to put pressure on the NAACP because they like to sellout unless things are easy and 100% clear.
This is a systemic problem, as I have illustrated with the NAACP, whom I have personally challenged to get in there and get their hands dirty, actually stand up instead of selling out, as they so often do:
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/03/king-warns-naacp-investigate-duke-rape.html
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/03/naacps-timmons-and-american-towers.html
As a former reporter for a weekly and a daily, I’m also disgusted with the veil of secrecy.
No Justice, No Peace.
This makes me so mad, I wish I lived closed to Durham. This was a deliberate act done by these assholes. Why would a bunch of prepy white lacrose players hire two black strippers? This looks pre-planned and very disturbing. Black men up there need to act. All my thug brothers near Burhah need to act on this situation instead of killing eachother.
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.
1. Because the victim was an African American exotic dancer, did she deserve to be raped? Let me answer it for you. NO!
2. Because the alleged rapist were members of the DUKE lacrosse squad and were white do they have the right to rape and African-American exotic dance?
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
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i’ve been battling with site crashes for the past couple of days. i saw this and it is being covered in major media. MSNBC online, NYTimes Sports … it’s not on the front pages, but it is getting covered obliquely.
This need a lot more coverage than it’s getting. Encourage activism: http://justiceforher.blogspot.com
Hi
After having strong feminist leanings for most of my life it is wonderful to see an online community of women talking about the real issues affecting their lives . Women can safely talk in this environment and its good to see that they are doing it. We cannot be silenced any more.
As well as been a feminist I have always been romantic but find it hard to come to grips with the imperfection of that dream in a patriachial society. We have superimposed on love and marriage a system of coerced subservience almost slavery. The two are not compatable and love is often stamped out because of this system.
I look forward to reading your blog ladies (and guys)
Just for the record, the Sally who posted above and on the “Can Men Be Feminists” thread is not me, the old, cranky Sally who harps on disability. I’m sure that the new Sally is much more civil and appropriate than me, and since I’m mostly lurking these days, I bequeath the Sally mantle to her.
Why would these two woman willfully return to a house to dance naked- a house that minutes before they had just fled humilated, terrified and in tears because of the drunk, agressive, sexually-charged mob of 40 male jocks that had hurled racial slurs at them and had threatened them with sexual violence? The victim told police that both women went VOLUNTARILY back into that house! WHAT?
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I just want to ask how you are so sure members of the lacrosse team raped this woman? Isn’t it also the case that classism, racism, and sexism works against the possibly innocent members of the lacrosse team? I’m not speaking for them; I just don’t think we should jump to conclusions before we have all the details a jury would have. What we do know is that she has accused three white men at that party of rape and assault, that there was no DNA “match” (which means there was evidence, but no match), her friend as a witness, and that is all that has been in the news. Will it be a she said, he said case, then? I’m not an expert on the statistics for rape cases, but how many criminals are charged in cases with as little evidence as this case?
Number 53: Yes, those poor white boys. they have it so bad! All that power, and it can’t protect them when they act like assholes and rape someone. If they’re so innocent, why don’t they act like it?
Ann Lew—–There’s no what the fuck about it. Single mother, two kids? I’m glad you’ve never been that poor, but some of us here have been, and before you start implying the victim is lying or stupid, you need to walk a mile in our shoes.
Oh, yeah, and please don’t attempt the ‘I have been poor and I’m still too smart to do that.” Yeah, well, we can’t all meet your standard. In fact, I don’t know why your standard, as unforgiving and judgemental as it is, pleases you so. It makes you look superior at the cost of the victim, and I know whose side that puts me on.
Descriptions Of Time-Stamped Photos Of Duke Lacrosse Party
Defense attorneys for members of Duke University’s men’s lacrosse team have said that time-stamped photos, taken at a party where an exotic dancer says she was raped and beaten by three men, prove their clients’ innocence.
For the first time Sunday, WRAL got a look at the photos, which were taken with a digital camera with an internal time stamp. Sources close to attorneys said the 19 photos, taken between 11:02 p.m. and 12:41 a.m. by a person they would not identify, matched watches in the photographs. (Read WRAL.com’s article on the photos.)
The following is a description of each of the 19 photos that sources close to defense attorneys showed to WRAL’s Kelcey Carlson on April 16.
11:02:36 p.m. Men are sitting around the house. Many have plastic cups in their hands.
11:08:28 p.m. Men throw their arms in the air as if they are cheering and posing for the camera.
11:09:25 p.m. A closer picture of a few men posing for the camera.
12:00:12 a.m. The first picture of the dancers. The accuser, wearing pink and white lace lingerie, is lying face down on the floor.
12:00:21 a.m. The accuser and the second dancer are dancing together.
12:00:29 a.m. Dancers are performing. The accuser has what looks like bruising on her knees. Her right shoe is missing from her foot. It can be seen in the background.
12:00:40 a.m. The two dancers are performing. A crowd of about 15 men is visible in the photo. The men are sitting on couches. They are not showing much reaction.
12:02:16 a.m. The accuser is on top of the second dancer. The accuser’s right thumbnail does not have a fingernail or polish on it. Her right pinky nail also does not have a nail. The men are smiling. The dancers are smiling.
12:02:46 a.m. A young man, who appears to be passed out, sitting in a chair.
12:03:57 a.m. The dancers by the door. The accuser’s right shoe is on the floor. The men in the room are sitting.
12:10:39 a.m. A young man passed out. His shorts are slightly pulled down.
12:30:12 a.m. The accuser is on the back steps of the house, alone. Her right shoe is off. She has a purse.
12:30:34 a.m. The accuser is still on the back steps of the house.
12:30:34 a.m. The accuser is still on the back steps of the house.
12:30:47 a.m. The accuser is on the stairwell of the back steps. Her mouth is open and her teeth are showing.
12:37:58 a.m. The accuser is lying on her back on the back stairs. She has a cut on her right foot. She has cuts on her right butt cheek. The stair rail has pink spots on it.
12:38:07 a.m. The accuser is lying on the back steps. A tan object can be seen in the background.
12:38:18 a.m. The accuser is still on the ground.
12:41:32 a.m. The accuser is seen getting into a black Honda Accord.
And none of those pictures show the bruising on her face, which she had after she left the house for good.
Nor does any of this deal with altering time stamps.
The grand jury handed down two indictments today on two lacrosse players who the victims identified with “100% certainty” were the rapists.
No information on whether the grand jury is considering other indictments, or if that was it.
DURHAM, N.C. — Two members of Duke University’s men’s lacrosse team turned themselves into authorities shortly before 5 a.m. Tuesday, one day after a grand jury reportedly returned sealed indictments against them in connection with an alleged gang rape at an off-campus party last month.
The two men, who attorneys say are sophomore Reade Seligmann, and sophomore Collin Finnerty, surrendered to authorities at the Durham County Magistrate’s Office at about 4:55 a.m.
Finnerty, a sophomore whose jersey number is 13, arrived at the magistrate’s office in a suit and tie; Seligmann, a sophomore with jersey number 45, in a yellow shirt. Both were accompanied by law enforcement officers and handcuffed with their hands behind their backs.
They have are currently being processed.
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