Duke Lacrosse Accuser Made Previous Report

AP ^ | Apr 27 2006 | AARON BEARD

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

The woman who says she was raped by three members of Duke's lacrosse team also told police 10 years ago she was raped by three men, filing a 1996 complaint claiming she had been assaulted three years earlier when she was 14.

Authorities in nearby Creedmoor said Thursday that none of the men named in the decade-old report was ever charged but they didn't have details why.

A phone number for the accuser has been disconnected and her family declined to comment to The Associated Press. But relatives told Essence magazine in an online story this week that the woman declined to pursue the case out of fear for her safety.

The existence of the report surprised defense attorneys, one of whom has sought information about the accuser's past for use in attacking her credibility.

"That's the very first I've heard of that," said Bill Cotter, the attorney for indicted lacrosse player Collin Finnerty, who along with fellow Duke sophomore Reade Seligmann is charged with first-degree rape, kidnapping and sexual assault. He declined additional comment.

Attorneys for Seligmann asked the court this week to order the state to turn over the accuser's medical, legal and education records, and hold a pretrial hearing to "determine if the complaining witness is even credible enough to provide reliable testimony."

The accuser, a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University in Durham, told police she was hired to perform as a stripper at a March 13 party, where she was raped by three men.

According to the Creedmoor police report in August 1996, when the woman was 18, she told officers she was raped and beaten by three men "for a continual time" in 1993, when she was 14. She told police she was attacked at an "unspecified location" on a street in Creedmoor, a town 15 miles northeast of Durham.

The report lists the names of the three men, but no other details. Creedmoor police Chief Ted Pollard said Thursday he had no recollection of the report, and his staff has been unable to find any additional information about it.

Durham police Officer Brian Bishop, who interviewed the accuser in 1996 while working on the Creedmoor force, said Thursday he had a vague recollection of the report but couldn't remember any details.

When asked about the accuser's previous report of rape, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong declined to comment.

Before Seligmann and Finnerty were indicted, attorneys for the players pointed to the accuser's criminal history when answering questions about their clients' legal troubles. The woman pleaded guilty to several misdemeanors in 2002.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Snow?

[BigSkyFreeper]

They don't get to argue that. They can either prove the time stamps were altered or the can not. From what I gather it is easy enough to digital images are altered if they were.

Modern cameras store EXIF header information in the image file. Examples of stored information are shutter speed, date and time, focal length, exposure compensation, metering pattern, make and model of camera used to take the picture, and if a flash was used. It's impossible to alter these, unless the image was run through an image editor, where the EXIF header information is stripped once the image is altered in the image editor. To have an accurate time stamp, the camera's date and time would have to be set correctly, and the original unaltered image would have to be submitted as evidence.

You can learn all you ever wanted to learn about EXIF header data here.

[F.J. Mitchell]

You wait! You just showed up tonight, on this discussion that has been continued from one thread to the next, for a long time now.

Do your own search through all that data and get back to us when you have brought yourself up to speed.

[VaFarmer]

I've got some comments on those ongoing threads, too. Sorry to have missed you, earlier. Search by "poster" if you want to read them. No need to, of course, if my comments don't sound like your cup of tea.

Any help from any of you on the source of the info about whether the players knew they were getting black strippers?

[F.J. Mitchell]

I can't give you a link, but I read it early on, it is there.

Check with Howlin, tomorrow, she has been on this from the get go. Send her a Freep Mail tonight and maybe she can provide the link you need when she signs on tomorrow.

[Jezebelle]

"So does Kimberly Guilfoyle--I hope she starts to look out for all the future REAL victims soon... What a travesty."

I hope she needs to look for a new job. Fox would do well to get rid of her before she gets a toe-hold. Her response to this case was strictly knee-jerk emotional, something she made work for her at Court TV, but Fox should demand level-headed and even-handed hosts. Compare her attitude to Greta's and you'll see my point. She doesn't analyze, she just advocates. It's one thing when a guest analyst does it, but altogether another when the host does it. If the host is going to be an advocate, a co-host is needed for balance. There are much better available at Fox. They should give the show to Megan Kendall or Judge Napolitano.

[OakOak]

I think they ordered two Ex-Cons that had a history of ripping off their customers. It's all the players fault.

Tonight (4/27) on Dan Abrams, Susan Filan acutally said that the Reide Sieglemann could have been on the phone while he was raping this woman! She said, I know it's sick but he could've called someone (purposefully) during the rape.

Okay, there were reportedly 4 people in this small bathroom and he's making 4 calls and the victim doesn't mention it in her statement? Of course, it didn't matter to Filan that at least one of those calls was to his girlfriend.

I never seen people spout such crazy stuff on National TV
in order to condemn these boys. Remember the Rape Jackets?
(to avoid their DNA from getting under her nails).
And someone said yesterday that the broom, cell phone, etc was essentially a Rape kit.

[beyond the sea]

LK was pokin'everybody with a stick!!

I checked out the thread. Thanks. LOL.

"The saddened, former owners can still put on their studded leather vests (sans chemise), put on their Nazi helments, and go out cruising on their hogs. And, if they are thinking ahead, they can have a case of Bud icing in the bathtub back at the trailer." -----

LOL

[xoxoxox]

If a cell phone can transmitt a photo realtime or delayed, then there could be irrefutable

evidence that it was not tampered with, if the received photo is stored in another device.

Also, phone company might have record of such file transmission and time for billing purposes.

I do not know, and in the end it won't matter anyway.

[beyond the sea]

She picked people with the resources to defend themselves.

Yes .......... not too bright of her.

Well let's see ........ Jesse Jackasson's says he's going to pay for this strange girl's tuition whether she lied or not .......... so, let the jackass pay when payment is required from a lawsuit that should be coming for illegally accusing these young men! How about that?

[Jezebelle]

Yeah, Guilfoyle was spitting bullets.

[Jezebelle]

"Keep an open mind" is the fallback position of people like Guilfoyle and Grace who shoot from the hip.

[Jezebelle]

They should sue her so the information can be brought out in open court. of course, she would probably just default.

[Jezebelle]

Nifong must have had to change his drawers after this news broke.

[Jezebelle]

Good plan.

[Jezebelle]

I don't know how Sean can stand to sit there across from Colmes every night. It would be all I could do to restarin myself from slapping him silly when he says such things.

[Ken H]

Why?

Because an opportunistic DA took charge of the case and unleashed the hounds on the Duke lax players.

BTW, I never got an answer from you when I asked you to back up your claim that the Duke players were being uncooperative. You wrote:

I thing the Seligman and Finnerty indictments were just a device by Nifong to break the "wall of silence" that he was getting from the Lax players. They never gave him the time of day...

The players volunteered to take lie detector tests, offered to give DNA samples, and the defense asked Nifong to look at their exculpatory evidence-- which he refused.

I ask again, what is the basis for your claims?

[Jezebelle]

That's what I think. I suspect she's been committed by the police before for mental observation and drug rehab or some kind of detox entered into the picture. That's where she was headed that night, and instead cried rape to get out of the testing and the commitment.

[beyond the sea]

If you see strange men lurking about in groups of three, RUN!!!

516 posted on 04/28/2006 12:28:46 AM EDT by stands2reason

ROFL ............ may I use that as a tagline?

"If you see strange men lurking about in groups of three, RUN!!!" -- stands2reason

[Jezebelle]

Yep. We really need to know what all is in that report and also in the new reports. I want to know what the officers said was going down when she said she'd been raped. What was the initial reason for contact with her?