Was it Really Rape?

During my freshman year of college I became friends with a girl I'll call Lolita, a thin and wiry girl with a shock of puffy hair that stood about her head like a dome of dark cotton candy.

One day Lolita came to the campus pool where I frolicked with other friends, but stood outside the chain-link fence. Walking closer, I saw tears and redness in her eyes. I noticed that one of the shoulder straps of her white cotton jumper was undone.

As Lolita and I sat on silver bleachers, she told me she had just come from the dorm room of her football-star boyfriend, a guy I'll call Gary. Trailing off into ever-increasing sobs, Lolita left space for me to ask the most pivotal question I've perhaps ever asked anyone:

"Did he rape you?"

Lolita nodded, and her affirmation set in motion the wheels of a mighty machine that began to spin quickly. Our gang charged from the pool straight to the hospital, where the doctor confirmed that Lolita's injuries were consistent with someone who could have suffered sexual abuse.

The Backlash
In the days after Lolita pressed charges against Gary, life around campus became scary for our group of friends. Gary's football buddies shouted "Get 'em!" and revved their car faster as my roommate lurched out of its path.

Lolita became so frightened she didn't want to be alone. She moved into my dorm room, sleeping in the make-shift full-sized bed made by me and my roommate pushing our single beds together. She broke down in the stairwell and hugged our friend for support.

But there was something in Lolita's cries that planted seeds of doubt in my mind. Was this just for show, or the real post-traumatic aftermath of a woman who had been harmed?

"I found a bruise!" Lolita smiled and said a day or two after her alleged assault, pointing to a small mark on her leg. By then I was seriously wondering: Is she happy because she found valid evidence to use against Gary, or false evidence to tag him with?

A Life Hangs in the Balance
I kept my suspicions to myself, even after intense pressure - or a guilty conscience, perhaps? - drove Lolita to relocate to another college in a state several hundred miles away. But the doubts resurfaced a year or two later when I was called to testify in the rape trial that was finally underway.

"Did you and the accuser ever exchange underwear?" was the only inane question I remember being asked during the few minutes I sat on the witness stand.

"No," I said, looking away from Gary's eyes as he sat next to his long-time girlfriend a few yards in front of me. It was only at that moment that the weight of what he'd been experiencing came to my realization. Gary was looking at the possibility of serving upwards of 25 years in prison.

The Verdict
When Gary was found not guilty of the rape charges, I breathed a silent sigh of relief, especially after reading a newspaper account of all the other details I wasn't privy to during the trial, like Gary's version of Lolita becoming infuriated that he refused to break up with his "real girlfriend" the same afternoon that he slept with Lolita.

I couldn't have lived with myself knowing that I had perhaps helped send an innocent man to jail for decades. But with the subtle nuances of date rape, I also couldn't help but wonder if Lolita got a raw deal.

I'll never forget the time - way before that pivotal afternoon - Lolita blithely mentioned to me that during one of her first dates with Gary he grew so sexually aggressive and forceful that she asked him to take her home.

Was that night a foreshadowing of a later event wherein the victim once again became victimized? Or was it unrelated happenstance? Only the ultimate judge will tell…

The Bluest Devils
The events that transpired during my college years play at the forefront of my mind as I watch similar events unfold at Duke University, whereby an African-American woman has accused three lacrosse team members of raping her.

Unlike my salad days, when the accuser and the accused were both black and no-doubt middle class, the Duke University situation adds to the volatile mix all the things that have made it a powder keg on a national scale: a black purported victim who was also a stripper, pitted against three white (read affluent) alleged attackers.

"It Was Just a Party"
There was a party. There were hired strippers. We all know the story by now.

But what we don't know is what exactly transpired in the ghost-town stillness of a spring break with Duke's campus virtually emptied of students, in the bathroom of a small house rented by three players of the lacrosse team.

The facts show that two African-American exotic dancers, Kim Roberts Pittman - whose stage name is Nikki - and the so-dubbed "Precious" at the center of the storm of controversy, arrived around 11 p.m. to the party, also attended by 35 members of the lacrosse team.

Pride and Prejudice?
Team captain David Evans admitted to 60 Minutes that he now realizes having strippers was a bad idea.

"I was naïve. I was young. I was sheltered. I made a terrible judgment," Evans told Ed Bradley in exclusive interviews that aired Sunday.

"In five months I've learned more than I did in 22 years…that even the smallest action has the greatest consequences," Evans said, professing his innocence.

But present in Evans' speech is perhaps a bit of the responsibility-dodging and pride that has caused this tragedy to grow into warfare beyond rape and into one of class and race: "This woman has destroyed everything I worked for all my life...She's brought shame upon a great university," Evans said.

Still Evans maintains that unlike the varying statements given by the alleged victim, his story has never changed.

"I have told a true story from day one and I will continue to tell it," he said, lamenting that for "30 years I could go to jail for something that never happened."

Paper Proof
Reade Seligmann, one of the trio of indicted players, trusts an iron-clad paper trail to clear his name that shows him calling a cab, extracting money from an ATM and buying food that fateful night.

"I'm glad they picked me," Reade was quoted as saying. "I'm so innocent and I have so much proof of my innocence…It's impossible that it happened."

Shockingly, Reade told Ed Bradley that he has never once talked to the police nor anyone from the district attorney's office about that night. "Never once," Reade said.

And do future decades spent in prison haunt Reade? "Never…I truly believe justice will prevail," he said. "How can it be the country that I live in? All it takes is for someone to point a finger and your whole life is taken out from under you."

Baby-Faced Finnerty
Collin Finnerty, whose youthful appearance belies the decadent events he's now surrounded by, was picked out of a line-up by the accuser.

"I was stunned and blown away," Collin said about the day an attorney called and Collin read the words his father transcribed. "If someone's indicted, Collin will be one of them…" his dad wrote.

The next day, Collin turned himself in. "It was unreal," he said, maintaining, "I'm completely innocent of the charges that have been leveled against me."

For the Love of Money, a Woman Will Sell Her Precious Body…
The most damning evidence against the accuser - aside from DNA evidence inconsistent with the ejaculation she claims occurred - are the new words being spoken by her dance partner from that evening, Kim Roberts Pittman.

"Were you holding on to each other? Were you pulled apart?" Ed Bradley asked Kim, referring to claims made by the accuser.

"Nope." Kim answered succinctly, asking, "Is that in her written statement?"

Bradley then recounted the alleged victim's assertion that Kim helped her put her clothes back on. "She was never undressed as far as I remember," Kim said.

"Did she give you any reason to believe she'd been assaulted?" Bradley asked.

"No," Kim said. "She was fine; she obviously wasn't hurt. She wouldn't have went back in the house if she was hurt."

Even when the party turned ugly with talks of broomsticks being used as sex toys, Kim reportedly told police that the accuser wanted to go back into the house because she said, "There's more money to be made."

The Trial of the New Millennium?
With accusations of racial slurs being hurled about that night, the upcoming Duke University trial has all the makings of a new millennial O.J. Simpson trial, which played out in an era when the country lost sight of the facts and morphed the murder drama into a warped vindication hearing about blacks and the injustices we've suffered at the hands of white police.

But unlike media reports that showed rooms of blacks cheering and sullen-faced whites staring slacked-jawed at department store TV sets, I pray that coverage of this case is different. Not so misrepresented and polarized to the point of causing race riots.

Not all African-Americans think that O.J. is innocent, and perhaps not all will be behind the Duke accuser if the unfolding facts continue in this direction. Rape is a horribly unspeakable crime, and real victims need their rights upheld and not tainted by those seeking to use it for personal gain or vendetta.

I hope true justice - whatever it is - will be served in this case, and that it doesn't regress into a larger witch hunt seeking retribution for unaddressed issues pertaining to racial or financial discrimination. Affluent whites needn't use riches to try and buy innocence if they are in fact guilty, but neither do downtrodden blacks need to seek justice in misguided ways.

Because even if the earthly courtrooms fail to protect a wronged party of any race or standing, the ultimate judge never will.