Posted on 04/21/2006 12:56:01 AM PDT by OakOak
Edited on 04/21/2006 2:52:00 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
At first, a stripper who performed at a Duke University lacrosse team party doubted the story of a colleague who told police she was dragged into a bathroom and raped.
Now, Kim Roberts isn't so sure.
"I was not in the bathroom when it happened, so I can't say a rape occurred - and I never will," Roberts told The Associated Press Thursday in her first on-the-record interview. But after watching defense attorneys release photos of the accuser, and upset by the leaking of both dancers' criminal pasts, she said she has to "wonder about their character."
"In all honesty, I think they're guilty," she said. "And I can't say which ones are guilty ... but somebody did something besides underage drinking. That's my honest-to-God impression."
Attorneys for the 46 players have aggressively proclaimed the players' innocence, citing DNA tests during a public campaign that has included describing and releasing photos from the party.
Those photos, the defense maintains, show the accuser was both injured and impaired when she arrived, and also support the claim that one of the two players who has been indicted would not have had enough time to participate in any assault before he left the party. The district attorney has said he also hopes to charge a third suspect in the case.
The attorneys claim Roberts at first told a member of the defense team that she did not believe the accuser's allegations. They say she has changed her story to gain favorable treatment in a criminal case against her. They note she also e-mailed a New York public relations firm, asking in her letter for advice on "how to spin this to my advantage."
"We believe ... her story has been motivated by her own self-interest," said attorney Bill Thomas, who represents one of the uncharged players. "I think that a jury will ultimately have to decide the question of her credibility."
Roberts, 31, was arrested on March 22 - eight days after the party - on a probation violation from a 2001 conviction for embezzling $25,000 from a photofinishing company in Durham where she was a payroll specialist, according to documents obtained by the AP.
On Monday, the same day a grand jury indicted lacrosse players Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, a judge agreed to a change so that Roberts would no longer have to pay a 15 percent fee to a bonding agent. District Attorney Mike Nifong signed a document saying he would not oppose the change.
"It seems she is receiving very favorable financial treatment for what she is now saying," Thomas said.
Mark Simeon, Roberts' attorney, said the bond conditions were changed because Roberts is not considered a flight risk. Nifong, who hasn't spoken with reporters about the case in weeks, didn't return a call seeking comment.
Roberts' testimony could be vital during any trial of the two sophomores, indicted on charges of first-degree rape, sexual offense and kidnapping.
Other than lacrosse players and the accuser, a 27-year-old student at a nearby university, Roberts is believed to be the only other person at the March 13 party.
Roberts said Thursday she does not remember Seligmann's face, but said she recalls seeing Finnerty - whom she described as the "little skinny one."
"I was looking him right in the eyes," she said.
Although she would not talk extensively about the party, she confirmed some of what the other dancer told police - including that the women initially left the party after one of the players threatened to sodomize the women with a broomstick.
The players' attorneys have said their clients were angry and demanded a refund when the women stopped dancing, but Roberts disputed that.
"They ripped themselves off when they started hollering about a broomstick," she said.
The accuser told police that the women were coaxed back into the house with an apology, at which point they were separated. That's when she said she was dragged into a bathroom and raped, beaten and choked for a half hour.
Later, police received a 911 call from a woman complaining that she had been called racial slurs by white men gathered outside the home where the party took place. The defense has said it believes the second dancer at the party made that call.
Roberts then drove the accuser - whom she reportedly had just met that night - to a grocery store and asked a security guard to call 911. The accuser was described later by a police officer as "just passed-out drunk."
The defense timeline is backed up by a cab driver who said Seligmann called for a ride at 12:14 a.m., and was picked up five minutes later. The defense argues that if the dancers were performing around midnight, Seligmann would not have had enough time to participate in the 30-minute assault described by the accuser.
The cabbie, Moez Mostafa, also said he saw a woman leaving the party in anger, and overheard someone say, "She just a stripper. She's going to call the police."
"She looked, like, mad," he said of the woman. "In her face, the way she walked, the way she talked, she looked like mad."
On Thursday, authorities released warrants detailing their search earlier this week of Finnerty's dorm room. Seized during the search were a newspaper article and an envelope addressed to Finnerty.
Also Thursday, 5W Public Relations, a New York firm that specializes in "crisis communication," distributed an e-mail signed "The 2nd Dancer," and Roberts confirmed she sent it after learning the AP knew her identity.
"I've found myself in the center of one of the biggest stories in the country," she wrote. "I'm worried about letting this opportunity pass me by without making the best of it and was wondering if you had any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage."
Ronn Torossian, 5W's president, said he replied, but got no response.
"If this person is indeed who they say they are, I would be happy to speak with her," said Torossian, whose firm has represented the likes of Sean "Diddy" Combs, Ice Cube and Lil' Kim.
Roberts, like the accuser a divorced single mother who is black, took umbrage at the notion that she should not try to make something out of her experience. She's worried that once her name and criminal record are public, no one will want to hire her.
"Why shouldn't I profit from it?" she asked. "I didn't ask to be in this position ... I would like to feed my daughter."
Roberts is bracing for an all-out attack, but said she's almost past caring.
"Don't forget that they called me a damn n####," she said. "She (the accuser) was passed out in the car. She doesn't know what she was called. I was called that. I can never forget that."
Roberts, 31, was arrested on March 22 - eight days after the party - on a probation violation from a 2001 conviction for embezzling $25,000 from a photofinishing company in Durham where she was a payroll specialist, according to documents obtained by the AP.
They knew it was wrong. Their editorials reflected NONE of that opinion while they "knew" Nifong was doing wrong. And now they wanna play high queen? Not buying it...
She's not up to their standards.
They are to be shown one at a time, then turned over face down so as not to confuse the identifier.
Each of the 46 lax players would have had to be presented with 7 non-lax players. Therefore, since Mangum actually has no idea of an ID, Nifong would have had to present 46 lax players plus 46x7=322 others. I wonder if he's allowed to "double dip" on the 322, i.e. could he "reuse" non-lax players or would they have to be 322 unique individuals?
Nothing to add to it except about what I suspect may be going on in the minds of some who are still championing keeping the rape shields in place.
First off, for the record, My total sympathies and support are always with real victims of rape. They go through a very rough time, even without a trial. They have to learn to "trust again. Trust their environment and the people around themselves. (But this is also the same for ANY assault victims.) And I am fully aware that some people do not wish, after an assault, to constantly be asked questions like "are you okay?" (*Good Manners* used to cover this kind of behavior, but *good manners* got tossed years ago in favor of "do your own thang*). But that also holds true for anyone who has been injured in war or been brutally beaten -- they too get the same public "inquiry". The.. "drive-by" casual acquaintance "Wow, I'm so sorry for you..." possibly even years after the rape or assault happened.
The rape shield laws, then, serve to carve out a window of time for "healing" for the victims of sexual assault, rape, and sodomy. Wish the same could be true for all victims of assault. It's not the same for them.
But at the same time, prurient displays of vaginas and penises, anuses, etc., are being constantly shoved into the faces via popular medium into the faces of "real victims of rape" - and in most cases, lauded and heralded.
HOW IS THIS NOT AN IN YER FACE?
It is. Logically then, this induces me to calculate.. that if a real victim of rape is given a shield law, then maybe all movies, articles, curriculum should BAN their usual PRO-POSITION on homosexuality, vagina monologues, sex scenes, condoms, rough consensual sex, pornography, magazines articles about "10 ways to please your man" during the same time that the "Rape Shield Law" is in effect for a victim.
You and I would agree that would be an infringement of private enterprise.
I continue to TRY to support the rape shield laws, and I can't. These do NOT make sense -- in this day and age.
The mass culture (media) exhaults and heralds any time of prurient "media" activity (gangs, dominatrix, escort services as ENTERTAINMENT) while... supporting "rape shield laws"?
Is this some distorted way they are showing their bias but while trying to assert they "care" for the victims -- made so by those who might be taking their cues to RAPE AND ASSAULT from the media culture?
How is this not an IN YER FACE to real victims of assaults?
Years ago, while I was fighting the behemoth known as pub ed? A mother came to me with her story.
Her child had been sodomized. Perp was caught. That child went on to pub ed. The child, in the classroom, was being subjected to the homosexual agenda where "Sodomy was normal". Her child ended up reliving the trauma. But moreso, and because the child's "teacher" was smiling and rattling on about what a groovy thing these relationships are.
This story sums my point best, I think.
Nifong's parents went to Duke. I'm thinking Nifong had to "settle" for Carolina because he couldn't get into Duke. And before the UNC grads start bashing me, I have a senior in H.S. who can't get close to either school and I'm well acquainted with the stats. Duke is impossible to get into and UNC is almost impossible. A jilted applicant to either remembers it for life.
Let's take the theory: that all three "activities" happened within 3 minutes or even 30 minutes. Let's suppose, the average, um "release" takes 15 minutes. And I'm positing this figure of 15 minutes upon, uh, the popular women's complaints of "short release" .
This means... that at least TWO of the activities would have had to have been happening simultaneously. This also posits that the "release" had to have been happening at around the same time. These are BIG guys. Do we know the physical size/height of Stripper#1? I could do more mental gymnastics here; but the point is: It doesn't add up given all the available data.
Even the porno flick makers when they do their flicks have to take actual physical height/weight/size/muscle tone into accounts when the cast for these scenes.
And then there's "staying" power. These are Athletes. You don't think they wouldn't wanna win the score for who lasted the longest?
Nah. It doesn't add up. Not the time frame, not the "assault" gymnastics, nor the alleged players involved.
It doesn't fit with the time-stamped photos images. Nor the hostile "negotiations". And Kim wasn't involved? Doesn't fit the classic profile of every man as a rapist, either. Or men as sexual pigs. Does it.
Kim? Where were you? And why, as you allege, you left Stripper#1 in the bathroom. Where did you go from there, and why.
Women have this tendency to band together when something threatening is taking place. They too know there is strength in numbers.
So, what did really take place?
If the allegations are true, did Kim Negotiate a sex act for the players on behalf of a stupored Stripper #1? Was she trying to get out with the money? Leaving Stripper #1, there, alone in the bathroom? Did the boys negotiate half now/half aftewards?
Just poking around the edges here...
She's giving strippers a bad name. She's an con artist escort, also known as a prostitute. She works for a shady escort service. Having sex with the clients is part of the job description. The sex activities included in the price are agreed upon prior to hiring her services. For all we know this was the 5th paid sex activity of the evening.
Scenario 1:
She danced for 5 minutes topless, figured she had a bunch of naive young boys and demanded full payment upfront before continuing. The boys smelled a rat, and when hinted she was not having sex with anyone, the clients refused to pay her due to breech of agreed verbal contract.
Scenario 2:
She arrived, danced for 5 minutes topless and then demanded full payment. They paid her half and she danced for another 15 minutes, announced "you guys are too wild, I'm not continuing", and then hid in the bathroom, called for armed backup, starting verbal threats, and everyone fled the building.
She refused to perform her services rendered, and based on the clear evidence, she filed very serious false charges. In a just world, her and the DA belong in prison.
Guess you've been out of school for a few years. Grade inflation. Anything below a B is considered a flunking grade in many schools. Depends more on her major.
Basically you don't believe the AV or any of the witnesses. Your theory comes from...?
Oh more than a few years. I took community college classes up until my mom passed away in 2003. It didn't stop me from getting a fat F in general math, though. Still can't hack geometry or fractions. A's in everything else though. I sweated blood for those grades, and I can't imagine a "Crystal" doing the same.
Of course community college(wanted to transfer over to state when it was time) and university are two different entities.
Things are very different now. Students think any grade less than an A is an insult, less than a B is a flunk. Believe it or not some of them threaten to sue.
Oh I believe it. I would have kissed the ground to get a C in that math class, so I could have moved on to algebra, which was easy for me. Learned it in my math anxiety class, lol!
We had an exercise called "peer editing" in English. If it were one of my kids, I would have taken a red pen to their rough drafts. A couple of papers would have bled red ink, but I felt very uncomfortable doing that, so I tried to pussyfoot around and work with them. Mind that I am old enough to be their mom. I had the advantage of 5 yrs of Catholic school back in the '60's. Wish my folks hadn't put me in public school.
If you saw some of the work that was turned in, and my kids are no exception unfortunately, you'd wonder exactly what kids do in school all day.
I came to my theory of the thing based on a series of facts (and that theory is still open to reconsideration as more information becomes available).
When folks wish to dismiss my theory of it by ignoring most of the evidence that I have cited...well, it does not inspire me to the tedious task of repeating myself. We all have various reasons, I suppose, for coming to our conclusions. All of those reasons do not arise from the facts and evidence of the case. I've done my best to focus on the evidence.
News & Observer
Published: Apr 22, 2006
A county's humble beginnings
By JIM WISE, Staff Writer
Durham County observes its 125th birthday next week. The observance falls between the April 16 anniversary of Gov. Thomas J. Jarvis' proclamation of our county's existence and the May 2 anniversary of the commissioners' first meeting.
In between falls April 26, the 153rd anniversary of the opening of the Durham's Station post office and the 141st anniversary of the Confederate surrender at Bennett Place that lit the boom in Durham tobacco -- which, in turn, led what is now Durham County to secede from its origins in Orange.
Prior to 1865, Durham was an unincorporated hamlet around a train station. Local government was quartered 14 miles away in Hillsborough.
With tobacco booming, Durham went from 100 residents in 1860 to more than 2,000 by 1880, with equivalent growth in trade, commerce and litigation. In time, 80 percent of the legal instruments passing through Hillsborough's courthouse pertained to affairs in Durham -- and required Durham's men of affairs to waste a full day traveling if they needed to register a deed, testify in court or sue somebody.
What's more, ever since the town's incorporation in 1869, its aldermen had squabbled with Orange County's commissioners over who was entitled to sell liquor licenses in Durham. Sentiment grew in Durham's business community to do something about such unprofitable circumstances.
When the state legislature convened in 1881, Orange County representative Caleb Green -- who happened to own Durham's Tobacco Plant newspaper and shared interests with such industrial luminaries as Julian Shakespeare Carr, W.T. Blackwell and the extended Duke clan -- introduced a bill to take the eastern half of Orange County and some pieces of Wake, Granville and Chatham and turn them into Durham.
Naturally, not everyone was pleased. The affected counties stood to lose taxpayers, and Hillsborough's aristocratic nose went out of joint. The land-baron Camerons of Stagville and Fairntosh plantations lobbied against it and, while the bill sailed through the state House, it stalled in the Senate.
Chatham and Granville were striken from the proposition, but the cause appeared lost when Green's bill failed on two readings. Then, a deal was cut and a sly parliamentary maneuver brought Durham back for a third time that proved the charm. And so Durham got a county to call its own.
There had been some sentiment to name the county for U.S. Sen. Willie P. Mangum, but even then Bull Durham was too powerful an identity to brook competition. The bully image even moved an Oxford bard, miffed at Durham's victory, to lament,
Tis at Durham's Bovine Nod
Our 'Solons' bend the knee.
In coming years when we shall see
A cow with wrinkled face,
We'll think of that unhallowed spree
That did our state disgrace.
Who do you think drugged her? Kim?
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Thats just my personal bias kicking in and I admit that.
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A black guy shot me in Atlanta and I never called him a n******. I DID call him m*therf*cker about fifty times as I bashed his face in.
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