http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/504586.html
Second dancer: Accuser wanted marks
Duke rape case takes new twist
Benjamin Niolet, Staff Writer
DURHAM - The second dancer in the Duke University lacrosse rape case told a television interviewer Monday that after she and the accuser left a team party, the accuser wanted to have marks on her body.
The accuser's words came as Kim Roberts struggled to get the woman out of her car, Roberts said in the interview.
"She pretty much had her head down, but she said, plain as day, 'Go ahead, go ahead, put marks on me. Go ahead. That's what I want,' " Roberts, also known as Kim Pittman, said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Roberts and the woman were hired to dance at the party, and the accuser told police she was raped by three men that night.
Roberts had not told investigators about the accuser's remarks in the car, according to an ABC News story about the interview.
Roberts and her lawyer could not be reached Monday.
Roberts has provided new information about the case in multiple interviews with national news organizations. She surfaced when she sent an e-mail message to a public relations firm seeking advice on how to capitalize on her involvement with the case.
Lawyers representing the three indicted lacrosse players have said the accuser's account of that evening is a lie and that no rape or assault occurred.
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong could not be reached for comment.
In Monday's interview, Roberts said the accuser was clearly impaired and "talking crazy."
"I tried to be funny and nice," she said. "Then I tried to, you know, be stern with her. ... We're kind of circling around, and as we're doing that, my last-ditch attempt to get her out of the car, I start to kind of, you know, push and prod her, you know."
That's when the accuser made statements about having marks on her body, Roberts said. Before she revealed the statements, Roberts sighed.
"This is hard for me ... because it is, I feel like it's prejudicial and I feel like it should come out in the trial," she said in the interview.
Roberts said the comments "chilled me to the bone, and I decided right then and there to go to the authorities."
But in a May interview, Roberts said she was reluctant to talk to police because she was wanted for violating her probation.
The night the two women left the party, Roberts stopped her car at a grocery store to get help with the accuser, she has said. When police came, Roberts, who had a warrant out for her arrest, told them she picked up the woman on the road in a crowd of men yelling racial slurs. Police did not ask her name, and Roberts went home.
A week later, Roberts' escort agency told her police wanted to talk to her about a possible rape. After giving a statement, she was charged with a probation violation.
(Staff writer Joseph Neff contributed to this report.)
Staff writer Benjamin Niolet can be reached at (919) 956-2404 or bniolet@newsobserver.com.
Staff writer Joseph Neff contributed to this report.
Pinging the DukeLax list. New info from ABC news...
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/LegalCenter/story?id=2617301&page=1
Sole Black Duke Lacrosse Player Says White Teammates Stereotyped
Says He Finds Rape Allegations 'Impossible' to Believe
By CHRIS FRANCESCANI
ABC News Law & Justice Unit
Oct. 31, 2006 — - He is the only African American player on the 47-man embattled Duke lacrosse team and the youngest man in the group.
In his first, exclusive interview with ABC News, Devon Sherwood said that his three white teammates who have been accused of sexually assaulting a black woman have been stereotyped by class and skin color.
"It's almost a reversal,'' Sherwood, 19, said in an interview that will air on this morning on Good Morning America.
"'Well, their daddies are gonna buy them the big time lawyers and they're gonna get off. We can't have that,'" Sherwood said that critics have said.
"It's just been all the stereotypes... I've even been stereotyped for being rich, being on full scholarship, [being] not in touch with my own black community at Duke... It's terrible to find yourself being stereotyped," Sherwood said.
"And you're like, 'Hold on, this couldn't be much further from the truth," he said. "You know? So it's just amazing that the things you see and that [were] going on in this case and how the reversal from black stereotype to now rich white, priveledged stereotype.''
'Impossible'
In an interview with ABC News' Chris Cuomo, Sherwood shared his views on his teammates, his own experience, the prosecutor in the case, race issues and the night of the now infamous off-campus party when the sexual assault allegedly occurred.
All three defendants insist they are innocent of the charges. Their trial is expected to begin next spring.
Sherwood said he finds it "impossible'' to believe that the rape allegations are true.
"I'm 100 percent confident,'' he said. "I know nothing indeed happened that night at all."
Asked how he could be so sure if he wasn't present when the alleged attack took place, Sherwood said he knew the defendants well enough.
"I don't hesitate,'' he said. "I believe in the character of my teammates. I believe in the character of specifically [the three defendants]. I would never ever... doubt them or think, 'Well, are they lying?' I would never do that, because I believe in them."
'Stunned'
Sherwood was at the party the night of March 13, but left early.
"It was kind of boring to be quite honest," he said. "We were just sitting around. And there was nothing to it. It was very boring. I was itching to get out of there, because it was -- I'd rather be going to sleep personally to tell you the truth."
He learned about the rape allegations a couple days later at a bowling alley with the other team members.
"Everybody's having a fun time and I just looked over my shoulder. And I saw four captains talking to our former coach. And we knew something was wrong," he said. "We were like, 'What's going on? Did the coach find out about the stripper party or what?'''
When he learned of the allegations, he said, "I was stunned."
"I was surprised. I was dumbfounded," he said. "You know what? It was almost, it was movie-like."
'If It's True, It's Disgusting'
Another thorny issue for Sherwood were the racial slurs his teammates allegedly directed at the dancers as they left the party.
Both dancers claims they were called racial epithets and that one of the young men yelled, "thank your grandfather for my white cotton shirt,'' as the pair of women departed. A neighbor confirmed to police that he, too, had heard the comment about the shirt.
Sherwood said his teammates approached him when the allegations first surfaced, urging him not to believe everything that was being said about the team.
He said he was moved by the fact that while the three defendants were facing felony rape charges, their first concern seemed to be his feelings.
"I felt really special then, because I knew they were looking after me as well," he said.
Sherwood seemed to struggle a bit as he grappled with the notion that his teammates could have made such caustic remarks.
While the alleged slurs have never been flatly denied by the Duke players, it's unclear who among the dozens of team members at the party may have uttered them.
"If it is in fact true, it's disgusting," Sherwood said.
Noting that he's never heard his teammates even jokingly utter such insults, Sherwood said that racial remarks are a fact of life in America.
"It's not the first time I've -- I woiuld ever hear anybody call ... me by the 'N-word' or anything like that... and it won't be the last," he said. "If it's true, everybody's human.
"Everybody makes mistakes," he said. "No one's Jesus. Like no one's going to be perfect all the time. So you just forgive. Don't necessarily forget, but you forgive and you work to correct the mistake."
'Lone Black Player'
As the only black player on the team, Sherwood was excluded from authorities' requests for DNA from all the team players.
"I was fully expecting ... to give DNA. I remember the day vividly. I remember they got me to walk out with everybody else. And then Coach Pressler, our former coach who I love dearly, he said... 'Come here real quick.' I came over. He was like, 'You know, you don't have to go,'" he said.
Sherwood said he knew his teammates weren't mad, "but it's almost like I'm leaving them...it's like I'm not there with my troops. That's the kind of sense I felt."
He said that, as the first player named in print, he also felt strangely isolated by his race, a feeling he said he never felt on the field or in the locker rooms.
"Devon Sherwood...the lone black player," he quoted an early newspaper article as referring to him. "The 'lone' being the key word, as if I was in a corner in the locker room. Everybody else was 50 yards away from me. It was a very, very key word there -- the 'lone.' Instead of saying the 'sole' black player, the 'lone' black player."
'Rot In Hell'
Sherwood said that last spring he was the target of accusatory, anonymous e-mails
"One e-mail, [the] person basically said that if my teammates [go down] then I should go down as well, that I should quote-unquote, rot in hell.
"I don't know why. I wish I knew why...but at the same time...I really don't care. But at that time I was like, 'Whoa -- this guy wants me to rot in hell. Like, he doesn't even know -- he doesn't even know who I am...what my favorite food is or anything like that. He doesn't know me at all. And he wants me to rot in hell if these guys go down, too,'" he said.
"I would get random e-mails saying I was letting down my race, that I should turn in my teammates, referring to me as a 'young black soldier,' basically saying I was letting down my race, I was letting down my forefathers, which is completely insane," he said.
Sherwood said he turned to his mother, Dawn, a class of '75 Duke graduate school alumnus, who counseled him to take it all in stride.
Tensions Rising
As tensions throughout Durham rose with the quickening pace of the investigation, Sherwood found himself in the middle of an escalating conflict.
Two of this teammates had been indicted. A third indictment was in the air. Team member said there had been threats of drive-by shootings.
The case was the talk of the town and the nation. Protests were launched, on and off campus. The county courthouse was a daily mob scene. The coming district attorney election was a neck-and-neck race. The press was everywhere.
But there were moments of levity.
In late April, days before the primary election, the New Black Panther Party threatened to march onto campus, armed, and conduct their own interrogations of the players. Counter protesters -- among them white supremacists -- emerged and vowed to meet the Panthers at the gates of the school.
Sherwood's mother Dawn began to worry about her son, as she saw the images of the protests on television from her Freeport, N.Y., home.
She and other family members began calling around, trying to locate Devon in Durham and make sure he was safe.
Time passed, and no one could seem to find Devon.
When they finally got him, he answered the phone, groggy and annoyed.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm asleep in bed. You woke me up."
His mother said she always laughs when she tells that story.
Re-Election Bid
Sherwood said he felt Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong had used race "to his advantage to get re-elected.
"I think he's used that -- he's used ... the black people of Durham -- and the white people of Durham as well.''
Nifong indicted two players -- Colin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann -- two weeks before a tight primary election that he won by a margin of 3 percent. Two weeks after the election, he indicted Duke lacrosse captain Dave Evans.
Ghosts
Sherwood said he has felt a deep-seated camaraderie with his teammates since the day he joined the team as a walk-on player.
"I had one brother when I came to Duke. Now I have 47 brothers...46 of them just happen to be white," he said
Sherwood's parents were both Duke graduates and his father Charles, undergraduate class of '75, is believed to have been Duke lacrosse's first black player.
The younger Sherwood turned down a scholarship at another school to play at Duke, where he said he felt most comfortable after meeting with former coach Pressler.
Sherwood said the entire experience, which he said has torn apart the lives of his teammates and their families, has also strengthened the bond between the young men.
"We're almost inseparable," he said. "We have a bond for life that no one else has. We know that we're in a unique situation.
"And it's something to be... definitely something to remember. I wouldn't say I think 'cherish' is the right word, but ... it's something that is very unique and that you can definitely remember for the rest of your life -- and know that if you have a problem or if you need to talk to somebody that you can call any one of those 46 guys. And that they'll be glad, they'll gladly want to listen, to try and help in any way they possibly can."
He said he is a little bit haunted by the absence of his teammates. Evans graduated, and Finnerty and Seligmann have been suspended from the university because of the criminal charges against them.
"It hurts," he said. "Like, you walk ... and you see [their] lockers, just empty, nothing there.
"It's kind of like -- it's not -- I don't want to say ghosts.
"But it's just like, you know, you wish they were there with you.''