Tawana Brawley rape hoax
Tawana Vicenia Brawley[1] (born December 15, 1971)[1][2] is an African American woman from New York who gained notoriety in November 1987 at age 15 when she falsely accused four white men of kidnapping and raping her over a four-day period.
The charges received national attention in part because of the appalling condition in which she had been left, her young age, and the professional status of the persons she accused of the crime (including police officers and a prosecuting attorney).
[3] After hearing evidence, a grand jury concluded in October 1988 that Brawley had not been the victim of a forcible sexual assault, and that she may have created the appearance of such an attack herself.
[8][9] The mainstream media's coverage drew heated criticism from the African American press, and from many black leaders who believed the teenager and her story.
On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, who had been missing for four days from her home in Wappingers Falls, New York, was found seemingly unconscious and unresponsive, lying in a garbage bag several feet from an apartment where she had once lived.
[12] In December 1987, more than one thousand people, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, marched through the streets of Newburgh, New York, in support of Brawley.
When civil rights activist Al Sharpton, with attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, began handling Brawley's publicity, the case quickly became highly controversial.
[15][18] Based on Crist's suicide note, The New York Times reported that he killed himself because his girlfriend ended their relationship shortly before his death, and because he was upset that he was unable to become a state trooper.
"[16] In June 1988, at the height of the controversy surrounding the case, a poll showed a gap of 34 percentage points between blacks (51%) and whites (85%) on the question of whether Brawley was lying.
[24] Faced with an uncooperative Brawley, who was advised by Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason to not answer questions, New York governor Mario Cuomo eventually appointed the state's attorney general, Robert Abrams, as special prosecutor for the case.
A grand jury was convened to hear evidence, with John M. Ryan, Abrams's assistant in charge of criminal prosecutions, delegated the responsibility of leading the investigation.
[25] Their inflammatory rhetoric and tactics, such as conditioning interviews with investigators on Cuomo, Abrams and Ryan undergoing psychological evaluations, were viewed by many as flippant and inappropriate.
Sharpton, in particular, drew criticism for comparing requests to meet with Abrams, known for his strong record on civil rights, to "asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr.
When Roger L. Green, an influential Black member of the New York State Assembly, spoke out against language he perceived as unhelpful and needlessly divisive, Sharpton responded by calling him "a state-sponsored Uncle Tom.
[29][30] On June 6, 1988, Tawana's mother, Glenda Brawley, was sentenced to 30 days in prison, and fined $250 for contempt of court for refusing to testify at the grand jury hearing.
[32] Much of the grand jury evidence pointed to a possible motive for Brawley's falsifying the incident: trying to avoid violent punishment from her mother and particularly her stepfather, Ralph King.
[33] On the day of her alleged disappearance, Brawley had skipped school to visit her boyfriend, Todd Buxton, who was serving a six-month jail sentence.
[34] Neighbors also told the grand jury that in February they overheard Glenda Brawley saying to King, "You shouldn't have took the money because after it all comes out, they're going to find out the truth."
"[33] In April 1989, New York Newsday published claims by a boyfriend of Brawley, Daryl Rodriguez, that she had told him the story was fabricated, with help from her mother, to avert the wrath of her stepfather.
[35] Writing about the case in a 2004 book on perceptions of racial violence, sociologist Jonathan Markovitz concluded that "it is reasonable to suggest that Brawley's fear and the kinds of suffering that she must have gone through must have been truly staggering if they were enough to force her to resort to cutting her hair, covering herself in feces, and crawling into a garbage bag.
"[38] Reviewing Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing, cultural critic Stanley Crouch wrote negatively of "men like Vernon Mason who sold out a good reputation in a cynical bid for political power by pimping real victims of racism in order to smoke-screen Tawana Brawley's lies.
"[39] On May 21, 1990, Alton H. Maddox was indefinitely suspended by the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn after failing to appear before a disciplinary hearing to answer allegations regarding his conduct in the Brawley case.
