Thursday, April 12, 2007

Duke Accuser Won't Face Charges


"The woman who falsely accused Duke lacrosse team members of raping her won't face any charges, because prosecutors think she "may actually believe" the stories she told.

"We believe it is in the best interest of justice not to bring charges" against the woman, Crystal Gail Mangum, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said yesterday.

The Duke case wasn't the first time the Durham, N.C., woman had accused men of harming her - nor was it her first brush with the law.

In 1996, Mangum, now a 28-year-old mother of three, told police she had been kidnapped and raped three years earlier - when she was 14 years old. Her attackers, she said, included her adult boyfriend.

Mangum's then-fiancé said he encouraged her to go to the cops after she told him that the boyfriend beat her and allowed his friends to have sex with her.

The case was never pursued: Relatives said she feared she might be harmed if she pressed it, while other reports suggested police told her too much time had passed.

Mangum, the youngest of three, graduated from Hillside High School in Durham in 1996. She was briefly in the U.S. Navy, receiving training as a radio operator, serving in California and being impregnated by another sailor before returning to North Carolina and seeking work as an exotic dancer.

In 2002, Mangum was arrested for drunken driving, assaulting a cop and other charges after she reportedly stole the keys to a patron's taxi and took off while working at a club. She was sentenced to fines and probation.

Two years later, she received her associate's degree from Durham Technical Community College. She was studying police psychology at North Carolina Central University at the time of the alleged Duke rape.

Mangum gave birth to her third child, a girl, in January."

Interesting. She starts a steamroller that ruins the rep of 3 innocent men, clearly breaks several laws, but gets off scot-free. Shades of Tawana Brawley? And then there's the NY Times we'd like to see step up and be counted, because it "reviewed the files" and found the evidence damning.

"...this story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our "newspaper of record," The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

In a case of "all the lies fit to print," the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser's story about the night she was "attacked."

"While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury," quoth the Times. And, "The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense."

Think the Times will publish this evidence now?

Bet your ass they won't. But let out that breath you've been holding, all you poor and downtrodden who've falsely accused someone of a crime, because the law nowadays doesn't prosecute the poor and downtrodden.

Only the wealthy and white.

So play that scam with impunity. Hell, Sharpton and Jackson have been doing it for decades and no one in law enforcement seems to mind.

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