Word: brawley
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...like a Twilight Zone set, Wappingers Falls (pop. 5,000) has become the scene of a netherworld nightmare, a place where reality seems as distorted as a fun-house mirror. Last Nov. 24 Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl, got off a bus on Route 9 and disappeared. Four days later the onetime cheerleader was found in a daze, crawling into a garbage bag in the backyard of her family's former apartment complex. Her hair was crudely cropped, her body smeared with dog feces, her chest inscribed in charcoal with the letters KKK and the word NIGGER...
...Brawley gave a disjointed story of being sexually assaulted in the woods by six white men. Shortly afterward, black activists from New York City arrived in Wappingers Falls to take charge of the case. On their advice, Brawley clammed up, refusing to provide investigators with further details. In the ensuing months, the case exploded into a statewide political and racial controversy, bathed in a glow of national publicity...
...stunning and unexpected turn, last week Brawley's lawyers called a news conference and identified a Dutchess County assistant district attorney as one of her attackers. That set the stage for a catch-22 impasse: the lawyers refuse to provide evidence until arrests are made, while law-enforcement officials say they cannot arrest anyone without evidence. Meanwhile, a swirl of questions revolves around the Dec. 2 suicide of a part-time policeman; the withdrawal from the case by the local district attorney, who cited an unspecified conflict of interest; and a history of violence in the Brawley family...