REQUIEM FOR THE DUKE FAKE RAPE

And the stripper who made a fool of The New York Times

It was nice to see Crystal Mangum, victim of the nonexistent gang rape by Duke lacrosse players in 2006, admit last week that it was all a fake-out. Many of you were happy, though bored, and moved on. But cruel people like me aren't ready to move on.

The Duke lacrosse case was the ne plus ultra of the media's anti-white hate. Lacrosse is the oldest team sport in America (apart from scalping and human sacrifice) now played by mostly white, preppie, upper-middle-class kids. So when Mangum claimed she'd been gang-raped, beaten, kicked and strangled by members of the Duke lacrosse team after being hired as a stripper, the media thought it was Christmas Day.

In lieu of reporting, news reports were bristling with references to "frat boys," "entitled," someone's "daddy," "white male privilege," "the patriarchy" and -- of course -- "slave masters." ("The tangled American opera of race, sex and privilege" -- in the deathless prose of New York Times reporter Duff Wilson.)

Mangum's credibility was not exactly bulletproof. A year earlier, she'd been hospitalized for psychiatric problems; she was on antidepressants, in addition to having a serious drinking problem; and she once pleaded guilty after trying to run over a police officer with a taxicab she'd just stolen. This also wasn't the first time she'd claimed to have been gang-raped by three men. Even her father said the previous allegation was false.

Moreover, her claims about the lacrosse players were really a kaleidoscope of stories. First, she insisted she hadn't been raped at all, and then she said she'd been raped, but the number of rapists kept changing (20, five, four, three or two, before she finally settled on three), as did the number of orifices that had been raped.

None of the doctors and nurses who examined Mangum found any physical evidence that she'd been raped, much less violently gang-raped in a small bathroom. Even when given an absurd and unconstitutional photo "lineup" of only team members (no wrong answers!), her description of the rapists was so at variance with the actual players that some speculate she was trying to hit the eject button on the whole case. But District Attorney Mike Nifong wouldn't let her.

After a year of Nifong torturing the "suspects" (with the enthusiastic cooperation of Duke University) -- putting them in handcuffs for the cameras, lying about their cooperation, hiding the DNA evidence clearing them -- then-North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper took over the case, dismissed all charges, and took the highly unusual step of declaring the players, "innocent." DA Nifong was removed, disbarred and jailed.

Why would any prosecutor so maniacally pursue trumped up charges, in open defiance of the evidence? It seems that Nifong was up for reelection and was trying to impress his black constituents. As Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson put it in their excellent book on the case, "Until Proven Innocent": "Black leaders and voters made it clear that his only chance of winning the primary was ... by indicting lacrosse players for a rape that he must have known they did not commit."

I note at this juncture that there is no jurisdiction in the country where a prosecutor could impress white constituents by railroading innocent black men.

In a surprise development, The New York Times reported the case honestly at first, with Joe Drape talking to both sides, the prosecution AND the defense. Unfortunately, any actual reporting inevitably cast doubt on the state's case. So Drape was promptly yanked off the story, and it was handed to writers who could be counted on to talk only to Nifong.

Times sportswriter Selena Roberts wrote an entire column premised on Nifong's easily disproved claim that the athletes had refused to cooperate. In her first column on the case on March 31, 2006, Roberts wrote: "Players have been forced to give up their DNA, but to the dismay of investigators, none have come forward to reveal an eyewitness account."

In fact, the accused immediately gave statements to the police of their own free will -- without counsel present -- and eagerly provided their DNA, blood and saliva samples, knowing it would prove them innocent (which it did ... to no effect).

The Times had to issue a correction to Roberts' claim.

But Roberts burbled on, comparing the lacrosse team to "drug dealers and gang members engaged in an anti-snitch campaign," accusing them of being "roped off from the norms of decent behavior," and abiding by "the Vegas rule of 'what goes on here, stays here.'"

Appalled by the players' supposed lack of cooperation, Roberts turned, naturally, to a women's study professor, Katie Gentile at John Jay College. Based on her extensive research, Gentile explained to Times readers that, for male athletes, "your self-esteem is more valuable to you than someone else's life."

Someone else's life?

The only lives that were nearly destroyed here were those of the accused lacrosse players. Give me any reason why -- it doesn't even have to be true, just a reason -- other than that they were white men.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER