On November 28, 1987, Joyce Lloray, through her apartment's sliding glass door, saw a black girl climb into a big green plastic garbage bag and then lie still on the cold, muddy ground. Mrs. Lloray called the police, setting in motion what might be considered the grand-daddy of all bogus hate crimes, the Tawana Brawley rape case.

This is the phony hate crime that made Al Sharpton famous, a national affliction from which we still suffer, and this is the rape hoax that was mirrored two decades later when Crystal Gail Mangum accused the Duke lacrosse team of raping her during a team party.

The racial turmoil caused by Brawley's accusations lasted almost a whole year in the city and state of New York, even though her story was completely untenable and belied by evidence from the very start. Number one, the woman who called the police said she watched her crawl into the bag voluntarily. Number two, she said she was raped and the hospital found no evidence of sexual assault. And number three, there were no injuries consistent with her story of being kidnapped and held captive outdoors for three days. She had even brushed her teeth that day. What's more, in testimony later, friends said they had seen her at a party, people had seen her coming and going from the apartment where her family used to live, and the actual reason for her leaving home in spite of being grounded was to visit a boyfriend serving time in the Duchess County jail.

Since her step-father had a tendency to beat her (he even attempted to beat her inside a police station once), the motive for Tawana's lying seems fairly obvious.

Like a lot of bogus hate crime victims who play the race card, the racial epithets found scrawled on Tawana Brawley's body were upside down, as they would be if she wrote them on herself... insert your own IQ joke here.

In spite of Al Sharpton's grandstanding, in October of 1988 a grand jury found no evidence that any of Tawana Brawley's claims were believable, and specifically exonerated Steven A. Pagones, a Duchess County DA who Sharpton wildly claimed was one of the rapists. Pagones subsequently sued Sharpton and Brawley for defamation and won.

Sources:

2000 - The Eighties Club - The Tawana Brawley Hoax

11/18/07 - New York Daily News - 20 years later, Tawana Brawley has turned her back on the past

9/8/03 - Slate - The Worst of Al Sharpton

7/4/88 - People Magazine - Trials of Tawana

12/25/12 - New York Post - Now pay up, Tawana

Wikipedia - Tawana Brawley rape allegations



Posted from Reno, Nevada, USA