Aaron Graves, Duke’s associate vice president for campus safety and security, said the campus officer did nothing wrong as he “documented what took place” in the hours after the rape was reported, including “what he felt or perceived he heard” from Durham police.
I have to wonder if any of these people ever played Telephone. For those not familiar with this game, the first person whispers something in the next person’s ear and then that person whispers what they heard to the next person and so on until the last person tells everyone the message.
For those who haven’t played this game, the message quickly gets jumbled.
From what I’ve read from the Bowen-Chambers report about the flow of information from the investigators who interviewed the alleged victim to the Duke leadership, we have an institutionalized version of Telephone. Yet many continue to take these intermediary messages, which may or may not be within 6 degrees of separation of their original source, as if they came directly from the alleged victim herself.
Here are details about the victim that have been verified and which came from an official primary source (vs. coming from defense team or those involved in possible criminal activity):
- Alleged victim unconscious in car at grocery store
- Alleged victim in emotional distress at hospital (from Duke report linked above)
- Rape exam found results consistent with sexual assault (from a variety of sources)
- Alleged victim had a highly emotional reaction to seeing pictures of a limited number of lacrosse team members before saying what caused that reaction
- DNA evidence recovered from at least one fingernail at least partially matches one lacrosse player
But some people refuse to give this primary information any weight and continue to insist that this alleged victim must be considered the true perpetrator in this case because one man filed a report based on unverified secondhand information.
Go figure.
Note: Also posted on my blog, http://abyss2hope.blogspot.com
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Also, pubic hair linked to case. I guess some will say the dna just fell into her nails and the pubic hair just ended up on her body. Big coincidences.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/11/national/main1609287_page2.shtml
I’m suprised no-one has made a bigger deal out of the fact that the Duke Police Department and Administration tipped off the lacrosse team that the Durham Police were investigating this.
The Duke report mentions the phone call was made on March 14th – two days before the house was searched. This gives the team plenty of time to work on a story.
I would guess, though, that the prosecution would emphasize primary source information over secondary, tertiary… etc. Good thing it’s a jury, and not the media and the overall public that decide guilt. However, victim or perp., some young lady’s life has been ruined by poor reporting of the evidence.
I can see the defense attorneys arguing that the police department’s PowerPoint photo array was leading, in that they showed the victim the pictures of all the white lacrosse players.
However, not all of the players were at the party! The non-attending players could be used as “controls”, although the police should have used unrelated mug shots of clean-cut men in their 20s in the array.
I think the finding of DNA evidence under the nails is pretty damning, though – evidence of a struggle. That should at least get a conviction for assault, if not rape.
“I think the finding of DNA evidence under the nails is pretty damning, though – evidence of a struggle.”
Finding DNA evidence under her nail is also consistent with her intiating the attack.
As for a solitary pubic hair found no one knows where on her body? She was on the floor in the living room, face down on a rug that probably hadn’t been swept since the lease was signed, then she struggled through a rape in a small bathroom crowded with three hairy-assed champion-level jocks: anally, vaginally and orally. I doubt I need to detail how icky anal sex can be when the bottom has not prepared.
… and the only DNA samples reported are a speck under one fingernail and one pubic hair.
Well, Nifong must present his evidence to the defense on Monday. DNA results, hard drive inventories, digital pictures, videotapes, interrogation transcripts, the works.
We should see then whatever cards he has been hiding up his sleeves.
my white (17 year old mentally handicapped) daughter was raped a year ago April 21, At Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY by members of 50 Cents’ G-Unit. 2 men in a bathroom, she said “no” was crying and the anal assault was brutal as was the oral. Money talked and my daughter was smeared and shunned. The college worried about enrollment, the town about reputation and G-Unit hired a private investigator to take care of us if it got to court. The way colleges treat rape has to change–like some one above said the DUKE police investigated this and that ruining the crime scene and warning the criminals to get an alabi and clean up before (or even IF) before the real police and DA get there. My daughter did all thhe hospital and , exams and all by the book and still got shafted–this is a criminal matter not a campus problem and should be treated as such.
Ann Sauter
Oneonta, NY 13820
she was white they were black, we are middle class and they are part of 50s posse. So racism goes both ways.