Word: brawley
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When Tawana Brawley was discovered climbing into a garbage bag last Nov. 28 in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., her hair was partly chopped away, her head smeared with excrement and her torso marked with the words NIGGER and KKK. The tale sketched by the girl and her mother told of a horrific crime -- the kidnaping, rape and abuse of a black 15-year-old by six white men, one wearing a badge. Last week, after six months of fitful investigations, a judge finally ordered someone to jail -- not a suspect, but the girl's mother Glenda Brawley...
...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...
...Wappingers Falls mystery in a human tapestry worthy of Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. Comedian Bill Cosby and Edward Lewis, publisher of Essence magazine, teamed up to offer a $25,000 reward for information in the case. Boxing Champion Mike Tyson spent six hours with Brawley, during which, he said, they did not discuss what had happened; he did bestow his $30,000 diamond-studded Rolex watch upon her. Black Muslim Leader Louis Farrakhan flew in from Chicago to address busloads of protesters transported upstate from New York City...
...publicity has been orchestrated by Brawley Lawyers Alton Maddox and Vernon Mason, veterans of New York City's race-drenched politics, and Pentecostal Minister Al Sharpton, a rabble-rouser from Brooklyn who calls New York Governor Mario Cuomo a racist and has likened State Attorney General Robert Abrams, special prosecutor in the case, to Hitler. Sharpton even contends that the assault is part of a racist plot linked to the Irish Republican Army...