Tawana Brawley Case Revisited

I recall back in November, 1987 while I was in college, some horrific allegations surfaced about an African-American girl, Tawana Brawley, who claimed that she was kidnapped and raped by a group of white police officers in Wappinger Falls, New York. Well, her mother, Glenda Brawley and stepfather, Ralph King, now want the state to reinvestigate the case, exactly 20 years later. They want to ask Governor Eliot Spitzer and Attorney General Cuomo to re-open the case. A special state grand jury had concluded back in 1988 that the incident was fabricated by the then 15-year old Tawana Brawley.

The attorney general's office has said that it will review a request for amnesty for Glenda Brawley so that she can commemorate the 20^th anniversary of her daughter's case in New York without being arrested. There is a fugitive warrant out in New York for her arrest dating back to her refusal to testify in the 1998 Dutchess County grand jury trial, which ultimately determined that there was no evidence her daughter, was raped. She has been living out of state ever since the incident. Alton Maddox Jr., her now disbarred lawyer, had sent a letter to Cuomo requesting the amnesty because his organization, United African Movement, is holding a commemoration of the events on November 28.

A little background... On November 28, 1987, Brawley was found lying conscious but unresponsive in a garbage bag, after she had been missing for four days. She was found several feet from an apartment where she had once resided. Her clothing was torn, burnt and her body smeared with feces. She was then taken to the emergency room, where medical attendants noticed several racial slurs and epithets written over her body with a black substance. She said that she was repeatedly raped in a wooded area by three white men. She could provide no names or descriptions of her assailants. Forensic tests uncovered no evidence of a sexual assault of any kind, nor was there any evidence of exposure to being outside for the prolonged period of time, in freezing temperatures at nights as she claimed. The police was able to poke holes in her story and there were blatant discrepancies. For example, on the morning after her alleged abduction, she was seen entering the empty apartment at Pavillion. Other witnesses claimed to have seen her at parties in a nearby town during the time in which she was "missing" and she had no bruises, scratches or any marks on her body that would lend credence to the fact that she was raped. It has been said that her mother was seen at the apartment complex shortly before Tawana was seen getting into the garbage bag and her mother waited until the same afternoon to report her missing to the police. It has also been said that the investigation uncovered that the damage done to her clothing had occurred in the apartment and not in the woods. According to the grand jury report, all of "the items and instrumentalities necessary to create the condition in which Tawana Brawley appeared on Saturday, November 28, were present inside of or in the immediate vicinity of apartment 19A." The feces had come from a neighbor's dog.

At the time of the allegations, a number of civil rights activists led numerous marches and most prominently among them was Rev. Al Sharpton, who was one of her staunchest advocates. Racial tensions boiled and gave rise to a new trio of activists: Rev. Al. Sharpton, attorneys Alton Maddox Jr. and C. Vernon Mason. The case quickly became explosive. The three claimed that the entire case was a cover-up going all the way to the state government. They specifically named New York prosecutor Steven Pagones and called him a racist and a rapist. I vaguely remembered the uproar in New York as a result of the Tawana Brawley case and being worried about the alleged "racial climate" they claimed existed in New York at the time.

To issue the report, the grand jury heard from 180 witnesses, saw 250 exhibits and recorded more than 6,000 pages of testimony. It ruled that there was no evidence that she was abducted, assaulted, raped and sodomized as she had claimed. There were no burns on her body and a shoe she was wearing was cut through, but she had no injuries to her foot. To make matters worst, the racial epithets written on her torso, were written upside down, leading to suspicion that she wrote the words herself. Her schoolmates gave testimony that she had attended a local party during the time of her supposed abduction.

Prosecutor Pagones, who was exonerated by the grand jury, filed a 4395 million lawsuit against Sharpton, Maddox and Mason. The jury ruled that the men had defamed the prosecutor. The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for making two and Mason, one. He also sued Tawana Brawley and won a default judgment against her for $185,000.

Brawley has converted to Islam and changed her name to Maryam Muhammad. "New York State owes my daughter. They owe her the truth," said Glenda Brawley. She reiterated her stance that her daughter was indeed raped by a group of white men who smeared her with feces and scrawled racial epithets on her body. One has to wonder why her family waited 20 years to come forward with their requests. Given the incidents with the nooses, Jena Six, the recent march of the Justice Department and purported simmering racial tensions, why have they turned back to the past? I really don't know what happened with Tawana, but if one would stoop so low as to elaborately stage such a scheme, then we were dealing with sick person then, and I hope she has healed and redeemed herself today. The incident with the lacrosse players at Duke University is chillingly reminiscent of the Brawley case and it was also proven to be unfounded and malicious, to say the least. Jesse Jackson came out right away and condemned the lacrosse players without waiting for the case to take its course, much the same way as Sharpton did in 1987.

In short, we do not need to revisit the Tawana Brawley case again. Her mother and stepfather should have come forward a long time ago to clear her name and get on with their lives. We do not need another media frenzy over a case that seemed unfounded at best. If indeed she lied in 1987, she should have been prosecuted for telling such a malicious lie and the same holds true for the stripper in the Duke case. There should be zero tolerance for this behavior, no matter what.