The Ongoing Allegations at Duke University

Things are not as they appear over at Duke University. Last week a young woman accused several lacrosse players of rape. Since that time, the young woman's story has had more twists and turns than a mountain road. First there are the two seperate 911 calls, the second of which she changes her story form walking to driving past the house and giving the exact address of the house.
A reporter for one of our local news channels went by the house both during the daytime and at night and through his report you can clearly see that there are no numbers on the house and at night it is virtually impossible to even see the front door. There are also inconsistencies in her behaviour that make one wonder what indeed did transpire. The local durham DA has been playing fast and loose with the rules, dropping hints and making totally inappropriate commentary about the evidence, like linking the fake fingernails that were indeed found in the house to his supposition that there must have been a ferocious struggle. But according to my friend Barbara Maholick it is the amount of glue that determines how easily or not the nails come off. In her words:
" You can use just enough to keep them from falling or such a large amount that pliers couldn't pull the damn things off." (used by permission-B. Maholick, April 2006)
Just because there are false nails laying about the room mean little on the face of it. It is just like seeing an empty whiskey bottle on a table in a house and coming to the conclusion that the resident is a lush. Context is everything with evidence. And just because you also find the 400 USD that she was supposed to collect after her visit still there in the house is open to interpretation as well. Any number of reasons can be advance but I will leave it to the defense teams to do so.
The parties in this are far from squeaky clean as well. To quote a news article from WRAL:

According to court documents, the woman has a record, which includes a DWI, a
misdemeanor eluding arrest charge, and three license suspensions. But she has
had no arrests for prostitution or any other related sex crimes.
As for the
players, The Raleigh News & Observer reported that 15 of them have faced
misdemeanors in the past three years stemming from drunken and disruptive
behavior, according to court records.

http://www.wral.com/news/8370290/detail.html?taf=ral Source

That does not mean that you go from a few scrapes with the law to rape. Nor does it mean that the young lady in question can be made out as a harpie. It just means that we should not jump to conclusions about this.

What all this means is that there are far too many red flags in this case so far to just come down on one side or the other. Aside from the predictable protestations of innocence from the accused and the all too convenient timing of the young lady's family insistence that she cannot discuss it, there is also the idea that the accused are innocent until proven quilty and have no real need to cooperate any further than they already have.

There is however another angle that causes me even more red flags. Within hours of the accusations came the racist, sexist, and oppurtunistic arrival of the radical elements. The accuser is of African-American descent whereas the accused are all Caucasian. That in itself is a red flag too because she did not accuse the sole African-American male player. Once it was her ethnic background became known, then the NAACP made a rush to judgement and began making demands that the case be solved like yesterday. The conduct of the DA handling the case seems to inidicate that he may indeed be pandering to the radical elements. Across Duke campus we now have radical feminists demanding that these young accused come foreward..to do what, exactly? These young men have no obligation whatsoever to say anything at all. And who are these people to make demands that these men violate their constitutional rights?

Sadly, the answer is that no matter what this case has already been politicized by elements who have no buisness sticking their knoses into this. The case is in it's infancy and may very well sort itself out into a frightened young woman in over her head who said something that she should not have and now she is in even more over her head. Did something occur? I don't know and won't know until it comes to trial, if it ever will. My sympathy goes out to the families of all involved because they are the true victims.

The lacrosse team members have forfeited the rest of the season and these young men may very well never get their lives back should all this sort out the way I fear it will. And the young lady may also never have a normal life either because she has taken on the Duke University behemoth. She may have thought that all she had to do was make the accusation and the school would fold. Or she may indeed have been scared. Whatever the case she will be the loser in all this as well.

The school itself has shown impeccable restraint, far more so that some of the radical elements in their student body. From the beginning the authorities there have urged patience and restraint, going out of their way to keep the radicals from going too far and have tried to be civil, classy and above all decent to all sides.

The other radical elements have not shown such grace or manners. Almost at once they rushed to judgemant, to crucify these young men without even bothering to check the facts. The NAACP became nothing more than a screeching harpie, the feminists were no better. Neither group has shown the manners and common good grace of Duke University. My late grandmother would be proud of the school's handling and be utterly dismayed by the others. I wonder if the groups and idiotic individuals who have rushed to judgement will apologise when this case falls apart or when these young men are found not guilty?

Probably not. And this hardly help the cause of women's rights either. But in the cloud cuckoo land of radical politics the ends justify the means regardless of the real truth behind the news. And somewhere I am reminded of Al Sharpton and the Tawana Brawley case. That featured many of the same plot elements like a young woman accuses police officers of Caucasian extraction and then when the story is exposed as false instead of saying "I lied" she comes up with even more extraordianry excuses and accusations.

The case before us requires a little patience and clear thinking. But some prefer to jump to their own conclusions without regard for the evidence nor for the rights of both the accuser and the accused.