Media abuses women who supported Duke lacrosse players

Cathy Young:

IN MAY 2006, the women's lacrosse team at Duke University announced their intention to wear sweatbands with the word "innocent" for a Final Four game at Boston University's Nickerson Field. This gesture was a clear statement of support for the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting an exotic dancer at a team party. In response, New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton suggested that "cross-team friendship" had overridden the women's common sense. In the online magazine Salon , writer Kevin Sweeney chided them for lack of solidarity with rape victims.

Now, it looks like the women's lacrosse team had it right....

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As writer Charlotte Allen has documented in The Weekly Standard, academics were quick to tailor the still-unfolding case to a narrative of sexual abuse of a downtrodden black woman at the hands of privileged white males -- males who, in the words of Duke literature professor Wahneema Lubiano, represented "the politically dominant race and ethnicity [and] the dominant gender." Much of the media echoed this narrative, albeit in more readable form.

Yet serious doubts about the accuser's credibility existed from the very beginning. Her story kept changing, even on such significant details as how many players assaulted her. The material evidence did not corroborate her charges and in some instances contradicted them. The other stripper who was at the party said that she did not believe the woman was raped.

But many people wouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good crusade. Eighty-eight Duke faculty members signed a statement, drafted by Lubiano, that expressed solidarity with the students who rallied against the accused. Its language was drenched in a presumption of guilt.

On a national level, one leader of this crusade was Wendy Murphy, a Boston-based former sex crimes prosecutor and an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law. Murphy, a frequent cable news commentator, is a foremost champion of the dogma that women who accuse men of rape always tell the truth. In one discussion on MSNBC, she proclaimed, "I have never, ever met a false rape claim. . . . My own statistics speak to the truth."

Whatever Murphy's "truth" may be, her television appearances on the Duke case became a gold mine of disinformation....

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Perhaps Murphy needs to be introduced to Tracy Denise Roberson who falsely yelled rape when her husband caught her with her lover, resulting in the lover being shot and killed. Tracy Denise is now charged with manslaughter because of her false rape claim. In case Murphy thinks Tracy Denise is innocent she should also look at the text message she sent to the dead man.

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The December night before the shooting, Tracy Roberson sent LaSalle a text message that read in part, "Hi friend, come see me please! I need to feel your warm embrace!" according to court papers. LaSalle apparently agreed.

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What people like Tracy Denise and the stripper in Durham have done is raise the bar for the true victims of rape, and people like Murphy and the media lynch mob are accessories in that offense to justice.