Twenty years ago, a fifteen year old girl named Tawana Brawley told a lie and got caught up in the highly charged racial politics of 1980s New York City.
Twenty years later, her family is continuing to perpetuate the lie:
NEW YORK (AP) — Twenty years after her allegations of a racially charged rape became a national flash point, Tawana Brawley’s mother and stepfather want to reopen the case, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Glenda Brawley and Ralph King want to press New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to re-examine the November 1987 incident, which a state grand jury ultimately concluded was a hoax, the Daily News reported.
“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.
Representatives for Spitzer and Cuomo did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages.
Brawley was 15 when she went missing for four days from her home in Wappingers Falls, about 75 miles north of New York. After being found, she made the shocking allegation that she had been abducted and raped by six white law enforcement officials.
The case quickly made headlines and drew the attention of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who became an outspoken advocate for the teen.
But a special state grand jury found evidence Brawley had fabricated her story. A former Dutchess County prosecutor who had been implicated in the case later sued Brawley, Sharpton and other Brawley advisers for defamation, winning a $345,000 judgment against the advisers and a $185,000 judgment against Brawley.
It’s time to stop the lying.
How do you know it’s a lie?
how do we know it’s a lie besides the fact that we lived through it with the media at the time nobody waits 20 yrs until racial tensions are at a high to demand justice if it was my child and true i would have fought for 20 yrs
im sure this is probably true.white people r weird like this. One night ill never forget i was 5 yrs old. my father was coming home from work.we knew somethin was up because my father would always come directly home, he would arrive @ the same time everyday. well he took his usual route which was through an extremely racist part of town (being that im from chicago)he was driving down 79 and cicero, this happened in the 80’s. 2 carloads of young whitemen boxed my father in beat the shit out of him robbed and pissed allover him. Then when we moved to Tinley Park,Il in the late 80’s we were constantly being harassed. we recieved letters stating NIGGERS GO BACK TO ENGLEWOOD (an all black community in chicago) NIGGER LEAVE sprayed on our garage several times. Then oneday my family and i were returning from my lil cousins recital. somebody had broken in destroyed all our stuff,had bowel movements through out our house and smeared it on our walls and clothes. it was so sick and disturbing ill never forget it. I BELIEVE THIS WOMANS STORY
I wasn’t sure then and I don’t think anyone knows for sure except those involved. I think the young lady was exploited by Al Sharpton and the other so called leaders, but something happened to her. It may be a bit opportunist for her family to bring up now with Al in the spotlight, but racial tensions are not necessarily any higher than normal. But that child is now a woman, and has stayed quiet for 20 years. I wonder how she feels about it being brought up again?
If your story is true, Ina, it is very sad and I hope that you were able to find joy in your life after this. But what is troubling is that you would judge Tawana Brawley’s story true based on the facts of your story rather than on the facts of her story. Our legal system is not perfect. Sometimes the guilty go free and sometimes the innocent are jailed. If Tawana Brawley’s story is found to be true I hope justice will prevail and we the people learn from it. But if her story is not true, then she is contributing to the continuation of racial prejudice and that is absolutely the most vile and disturbing thing especially if it’s just for money. Look AT The Facts Before You Decide.
Ten years after, she continued to state what had happened to her was true. 20 years later her parents are still asking for the truth. From what I remember, when it occurred, she was found barely concious on the side of a road and was suffereing from hypothermia. I still have a hard time believing that it was a hoax. The grand jury never heard testimony from the paramedics who treated her when she was initially found. Their testimony should have been heard because they had first access to the victim. It was around this same time, that those young men were convicted of gang raping a white woman, only to find out years later that the police lied, coerced and tampered with evidence. During those years, New York’s finest and the New York judicial system, statewide were know for being unfair in dealing with racial issues. None of us were there, so we truly do not know what happened, but I find it hard to believe that they would keep holding on to a “lie” for so many years. I think that after a similar case in West Virginia recently, they feel that maybe they can finally get justice.
Also, the judgement granted to Pagones against Brawley was a default judgement after she failed to appear in court. So no trial occured in this case. If what happened to her is true, I wouldn’t have appeared in court either because I would be to angry that justice failed me and now I am being sued after I was raped and humiliated.
Sharpton had egg on his face about this incident back then. Why would he have not tried to remedy that if he or any of the Brawley family had even a hint of proof that Brawley was telling the truth. Instead he backed away. He never backs down from something he knew he was right about. Sharpton can’t afford to be on the wrong side of another racial incident like he was on this one and the Duke incident, and I expect he will be hands off here. Brawleys, expect to be on your own in resurrecting the same story that ruled to be a lie 20 years ago.
How do we know its a lie it was proven
it was fabricated and therein is where Al got famous
If you listen to WTNT 570am you hear the commercial
for the Dennis Miller show where he says Al passes
for a bad Eddie Murphy impersonation. He also says Al is
on thepay no mind list
Pa-Lease! Give us all a break. There’s money involved in this professional viticm’s claim. I can’t wait to see the lawsuit. Her community needs some good leadership, not the slugs who pander to them and take their money.
Its funny that whenever a certain group of people are accused of anything ITS A LIE. That behooves me. Everybody is an animal in your eyes except YOU. This womans story is most likely true. Hello…black women were raped for centuries during slavery and for years after during the civil rights movements without so much as a blink from law enforcement. Cops are known for committing heinous acts against people that are different and getting away w/ it forever so why is this so far fetched. So its not like this is out of character . no JUST justice will ever be served when it involves a white man. This is a sad day when a woman who is a victim has to endure this much ridicule for justice. none of us were there so for everyone to state it’s a lie is ignorant. If i were her i wouldve disappeared too. And why is there so much hate for Al Sharpton?
Look @ OJ he’s free and he’s a murderer.You know what that says to me…theres flaws in our justice system. to say that this woman is lying is absurb, when we’ve been shown how you can have all the evidence in the world stacked against a person and they go free. the law can and will be manipulated in certain situations for certain people.Its the American way. When will people stop supporting rape and police brutality. I fear the future of this country
the story is a load of bull. NO court,Hospital found any evidence of rape or any misconduct. The story was a hoax and you will NEVER come clean. Why would you now anyway. You have to stick with your lie just to save face. But the world knows that the Tawana saga was a LIE!!!!! People actually testified that they saw her climb in a bag herself. Perhaps she made up the story to get away with a night of partying and wanted to avoid abuse from her step dad. Just a thought! But to sit there and say that New York is holding back evidence is a load of crap. And you owe The state an apology for wasting the courts time and accusing these men of rape.
Norelle: I have had a very bad taste in my mouth about Al since his handling of the Tawana Brawley case. I felt so bad for that girl at the time, he exploited whatever happened to her for his own good. That is shameful.
Some of Al Sharptons “people” even quit because they said he knew all along that it was a hoax. AND WHY is it that it is ONLY a hate/racist crime when it is against blacks. What about the recent one were 5 blacks abducted tortured and KILLED a young white couple out on a date. They found his body near a RR track burned and her tortured and mutilated body in a trash can in one of their houses. What about the Duke case? Were was the apology from Sharpton and Jackson and all the black leaders for screwing there lives up. ANYTIME a white does ANYTHING to offend blacks GOD SEND THEM TO THE GALLOWS, SUE THEM, FIRE THEM, but if it is a black that offends the whites SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! They just disappear.
To Bill Williams–She was not found by the side of a road, nor was she suffering from anything close to hypothermia. Get your facts straight, don’t just go by what you supposedly remember. Tawana Brawley was found behind her family’s old apartment, in a common area, between buildings, and there was no evidence of exposure. (Which there surely would have been, if she had spent four days outside, with the temps below freezing, as she claimed.) Read the NYS Grand Jury’s report. (It is widely available on-line.) The authorities spent a great deal of time and effort analyzing any evidence they could: for instance, they sent fibers to the FBI, they did a rape kit….there was no evidence of any sexual activity, no trauma to her body, no plants or twigs or any grass-type material found on her. (Again, if she had been in the woods for four days, there would have been some evidence of this…) As for the words on her, it was shown to have been written upside-down; in other words, she wrote the words on herself, with some sort of burnt-cotton fiber. Not to mention that at least one person saw her get in the garbage bag herself, and then hop to another position, then lay down again. On top of it all, she never gave a true account of what happened to her. She mostly communicated with nods of her head, and then wrote the words “White cop” on a piece of paper. She was never able to give a detailed account of what happened, what the people looked like, what the car looked like, what actually transpired, how they got her into the woods, etc etc. And you know why? Because it never happened. Nothing ever happened to her. Admittedly, she was a young girl who got caught up in a lie that completely got away from her, and yes, she was taken advantage of by black leaders like Al Sharpton who had their own agenda, but it doesn’t excuse it, especially after twenty years. As for her mother who wants justice now, her most telling quote was “We should be millionaires.” That’s all they want: money, not justice. (Incidentally, at the height of the whole circus, they took $300,000 that had been donated to them as a “defense fund” and fled to Virginia.) Al Sharpton has since defended his part in the whole affair by passing himself off as merely an “adviser to a young lady;” if they do re-open the whole ludicrous case, I would be interested to see if he rushes to her side once again. My feeling is that he will do all he can to distance himself from it, esp. now that he has gone mainstream, so to speak. I know this is long, but I feel very passionate about what happened, and any reasonable person, if you honestly studied the facts of the case, would have to agree that it was a hoax.
In addition, I just want to say to Norelle O’Bannon: I wasn’t there when Pearl Harbor was bombed either, but I know it happened. Of course none of us was there, but there is a little thing called, oh, evidence: a crime doesn’t occur in a vacuum. When someone is assaulted, there is trauma to the body, bodily fluids, hair, fiber…the assailants leave their mark. What is your basis for saying “…this woman’s story is most likely true”? Just a feeling you have? You can’t base one single case on some sort of historical precedence. That’s like saying if some British prostitute made up a story of being attacked by a man, it must be true because look at what Jack the Ripper did a hundred years ago….
Yes, there are flaws in the justice system, that goes without saying, but you still have to judge the Tawana Brawley case on its own merits, or rather, lack of them.
P.S. I hate to be nit-picky, as it were, but, aside from your spelling and punctuation errors, the sentence, “That behooves me,” doesn’t make any sense. You are using the term incorrectly. (I mention it only because I don’t want you to look too ignorant.)
I concur with bettie graham about getting familiar with the existing facts before commenting with only an emotional response.
Before finding this site, I had just finished reading the grand jury findings in the case (http://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/newsmakers/tawana/).
As already stated, Tawana was NOT found on the side of the road, barely conscious. She was first observed — behind her former residence, by a former neighbor — stepping into the garbage bag herself, looking around, hopping a few steps, then lying down. The neighbor called the police, and Tawana was “found”.
The grand jury DID hear evidence from the EMT staff. They also heard evidence from the hospital personnel about the physical exam and rape kit exam that showed NO evidence of ANY kind of attack, let alone a gang rape in the woods. There WAS however, a lot of evidence that Tawana had spent a bit of time hanging out in that empty former residence preparing the “evidence” that was found on her.
It was further found that Tawana had skipped school and stayed overnight with a friend just before disappearing. From previous experience, she knew that as a result she could expect either physical punishment (punched in the face by her mom on a previous such occasion) or grounding. She had also, with a group of friends, recently been around a girl who had falsely claimed to have been sexually attacked.
From the evidence the grand jury heard, it certainly seems that Tawana was looking for a “valid” reason to have been absent from home and so settled on a claim of kidnapping. I don’t think she expected the media storm to descend as it did; once started, it was very hard to stop. In fact, Tawana herself never initiated many of the claims made about the attack; instead, she would nod her head to suggestions made by other people, particularly her mother.
(Evidence also showed that in following days, she was inconsistent with displays of her ability to walk — several times observed running up steps or around a room, but a few hours later walking with a limp and cane in front of a psychiatrist.)
Reading the grand jury’s report, I kept thinking of the Salem witch trials, where the group of girls started by making accusations about some of their neighbors and the whole thing snowballed, resulting in the deaths of so many innocent people. The difference is that eventually the girls confessed to having been lying the whole time; Tawana never has. Having read the evidence, I believe there are possible reasons why not: the humiliation of admitting lying and/or the pressure of not striking a blow to the claims of racism. Besides, when there are so many people willing to believe based on emotion, rather than facts, why tell the truth?
Read the facts, THEN decide.