Father learned daughter connected to Duke case from media reports (Duke Lacrosse Coach Threatened)

Knight Ridder Newspapers; WRAL; NBC17 | TONYA JAMESON

[Howlin]

DURHAM, N.C. - The father of the woman who has accused members of the Duke lacrosse team of sexually assaulting her said he didn't find out that his daughter was the reported victim - and that she is an exotic dancer - until a reporter visited his house.

The retired trucker who lives in Durham said he saw his daughter the day after the reported attack, but she didn't say anything was wrong. She even left her car at the house for several days because he said she didn't want to drive it.

Her father, a quiet man who tinkers on cars as a hobby, said he saw news reports about the attack.

"I didn't know it was my daughter," he said. The Charlotte Observer generally does not name victims of sexual assault, so his name is being withheld to protect the identity of his daughter.

The case has ignited campus protests and stirred racial tension in Durham. The woman at the center of the case is black, and the men she accuses are white. She also is a student at N.C. Central University, a historically black college near Durham's inner-city, compared with the more expensive Duke campus.

DNA tests have been conducted on 46 of the lacrosse players, who deny the allegations. A 47th member, who is black, was not tested because the woman said her attackers were white.

Last week, a reporter stopped by the reported victim's house looking for her, the woman's father said, but he said he didn't know what was going on. He called his daughter and she said the district attorney told her not talk to anyone.

"(She) didn't tell us anything about it," he said.

He said he also found out through the media that his daughter, who is the youngest of three, was an exotic dancer.

"She always told me she was going to work," he said.

On Friday, he installed a timing belt in a car and watched his daughter's two children play outside the house. He said working on cars and playing with the grandchildren helps take his mind off what's happening with his daughter.

He said she seems to be doing "pretty good," and so is the rest of the family. He said they haven't talked much about the reported incident, but it weighs heavily on his mind. He said he's grateful that N.C. Central has been so supportive, but he doesn't like how his daughter has been portrayed in the media. And he's especially frustrated that no one has been charged in the connection with the allegations.

"If it had been anybody but them, they would have been locked up, but yet they didn't because it's Duke," he said. "I hope them boys - if they did it - I hope they get what they deserve. I hope they don't go lenient on them."

District Attorney Michael Nifong said he's waiting for results of the DNA test and that he does not expect to file charges in the case any earlier than next week.

[Dante3]

The false statements will cause her to lose credibility.

I read the DA will not release the DNA results. How odd, if true.

[xsmommy]

the Guilfoyle character is an abomination. EXTREMELY unprofessional. breathtakingly so. it was a serious error on Fox's part for bringing her on.

[TexKat]

Durham DA won't release DNA analysis

4/3/2006 8:28 AM

By: Gretchen Bartelt, News 14 Carolina

DURHAM, N.C. -- Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong says he will not release DNA results from Duke lacrosse team members this week.

The tests were in connection with rape allegations. So far no charges have been filed but community members continue to express outrage.

A vigil will be held Monday at 6 p.m. to show support for the North Carolina Central student who says she was sexually assaulted by members of the team during an off-campus party more than two weeks ago.

DNA samples were taken from 46 of 47 members of the Duke lacrosse team. Police are looking for three possible rape suspects.

The entire team was not at the party, but 46 lacrosse members willingly gave DNA samples to the police.

Attorneys for the players say the DNA analysis will prove there was no rape.

[TexKat]

Rallies Planned At N.C. Central

UPDATED: 1:34 pm EDT April 3, 2006

DURHAM, N.C. -- Two groups at North Carolina Central University are sponsoring several events tonight in support of the student who alleges she was assaulted by members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team.

Immediately following the Clothesline Project, which is sponsored by the school's Voices for Planned Parenthood, a vigil and rally are scheduled.

The Clothesline Project was started in Massachusetts in 1990 to address the issue of violence against women. It gives women affected by violence a chance to express their emotions by decorating a shirt. The shirt is then hung on a clothesline to be viewed by others as testimony to the problem of violence against women.

Instead of displaying shirts, a banner will be hung for individuals to sign and express their thoughts and concerns.

The school's Society of Future Health Educators is hosting two additional events to address racism, social class and violence against women.

[Howlin]

He has to give it to the defense attorneys.

[Howlin]

The entire team was not at the party, but 46 lacrosse members willingly gave DNA samples to the police.

That's the first acknowledgement of that I have seen.

[Carolinamom]

I saw and heard Kimberly Gilfoyle and couldn't believe what I was seeing on FOX, supposedly the 'fair and balanced' network. Besides having already decided that the entire soccer team is guilty as hell, she had so many facts wrong that she should be fired for incompetence as well as for obvious and blatant bias. (Her voice grates on me as well.)

Questions: Were the false fingernails found in the bathroom? Which is it...she was coaxed back into the house or she went (uncoaxed)to retrieve her shoe?

New fact to me: She was wearing 'see-through lingerie' in the car at Kroger's.

[Mr. Lucky]

Only if he actually files charges.

[Howlin]

Note: Bush gets a HUGE ovation at the Cincinati baseball game!

[TexKat]

Text Of Professor Baker's Letter To Duke Administrators

POSTED: 12:29 pm EDT April 3, 2006 UPDATED: 12:44 pm EDT April 3, 2006

March 29, 2006

Awaiting the Restoration of Confidence:

A Letter to the Duke University Administration

Television screens tuned in to MSNBC on the morning of March 29, 2006, broadcast a headline in bold red: DUKE RAPE? At the bottom right corner of the front page of The New York Times on the same day was an article about the rape allegations roiling Duke University. How is a Duke community citizen to respond to such a national embarrassment from under the cloud of a "culture of silence" that seeks to protect white, male, athletic violence and which apparently prevents all university citizens from even surveying the known facts? How can one begin to answer the cardinal question: What have Duke and its leadership done to address this horrific, racist incident alleged to have occurred in a university-owned property in the presence of members of one of its athletic teams?

The alleged crimes of rape, sodomy and strangulation of a black woman at a party populated in some measure by the Duke lacrosse team reportedly occurred on March 13. University administrators knew about and had begun to respond internally within twenty-four hours following the incident. But Duke University citizens had no public word from our university leadership until President Richard Brodhead called a press conference on March 28. Two weeks of silent protectionism left all of us vulnerably ignorant of the facts. Receiving e-mails and telephone calls of concern from friends nationally and internationally, we have been deeply embarrassed by the silence that seems to surround this white, male athletic team's racist assaults (by words, certainly -- deeds, possibly) in our community.

It is virtually inconceivable that representatives of Duke University's Athletic Department would allow its lacrosse team to engage in regular underage drinking and out-of-control bacchanalia. It is difficult to imagine a competently managed corporate setting in which such behavior would be tolerated (and swept under the rug), or where such a "team" would survive for more than a day before being tossed out on its ears by security. Moreover, in a forthrightly ethical setting with an avowed commitment to life-enhancing citizenship, such a violent and irresponsible group would scarcely be spirited away, or sheltered under the protection of pious sentiments such as "deplorable" -- a judgment that reminds us of Miss Opehlia in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, saying that slavery was "perfectly horrible." Such timorous piety and sentimental legalism, in the opinion of the author James Baldwin, constitutes duck-and-cover cowardice of the first order.

There is no rush to judgment here about the crime -- neither the violent racial epithets reported in a 911 call to Durham police, nor the harms to body and soul allegedly perpetrated by white males at 610 Buchanan Boulevard. But there is a clear urgency about the erosion of any felt sense of confidence or safety for the rest of us who live and work at Duke University. The lacrosse team -- 15 of whom have faced misdemeanor charges for drunken misbehavior in the past three years -- may well feel they can claim innocence and sport their disgraced jerseys on campus, safe under the cover of silent whiteness. But where is the black woman who their violence and raucous witness injured for life? Will she ever sleep well again? And when will the others assaulted by racist epithets while passing 610 Buchanan ever forget that dark moment brought on them by a group of drunken Duke boys? Young, white, violent, drunken men among us -- implicitly boasted by our athletic directors and administrators -- have injured lives. There is scarcely any shame more egregious than one that wraps itself in the pious sentimentalism of liberal rhetoric as though such a wrap really constituted moral and ethical action.

Duke University's higher administration has engaged in precisely such a tepid and pious legalism with respect to the disaster of recent days: the actual harm to the body, soul, mind and spirit of black women who were in the company of Duke University lacrosse team members as far as any of us know. All of Duke athletics has now been drawn into the seamy domains of Colorado football and other college and university blind-eying of male athletes, veritably given license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech and feel proud of themselves in the bargain.

Many citizens have weighed in, and one hopes all departments, programs and concerned members of our university community will speak out forcefully for swift and considered corrective action.

But of course, it is not exclusively our academic administration that seems to have refused decisive and meaningful action. The most deafening silence -- and, quite possibly, duplicity (which is to say, improbable denial) -- has marked, in fact, Duke's Department of Athletics. Where was Joe Alleva before Tuesday's press conference called by President Brodhead? Where now is the commercial charisma of Coach K, who could certainly be out front condemning Duke athletes who call people out of their name from the precincts of university-owned housing? Why aren't such stalwarts of Duke athletics publicly and courageously addressing the horrors that have occurred in their own domain? We remember the very first day of our new President's administration -- how he and Coach K shared the media dais, and the basketball magnate was praised for his bold leadership. It all seems rather like an Indonesian shadow play at this moment of crisis. All a show.

What is precipitously teetering in the balance at this point, during weeks marked by inaction and duck-and-cover from our designated leaders is, well, confidence.

It is very difficult to feel confidence in an administration that has not addressed in meaningful ways the horrors that have occurred to actual bodies, to the Durham community of which we are an integral part, and to our sense of being members of a proactive and caring community. Rather, gag orders and trembling liberal rhetorical spins seem to be behaviors du jour from our leaders.

There can be no confidence in an administration that believes suspending a lacrosse season and removing pictures of Duke lacrosse players from a Web page is a dutifully moral response to abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence and drunken white, male privilege loosed amongst us.

How many mandates concerning safe, responsible campus citizenship must be transgressed by white athletes' violent racism before our university's offices of administration, athletics, security, and publicity courageously declare: enough!

How many more people of color must fall victim to violent, white, male, athletic privilege before coaches who make Chevrolet and American Express commercials, athletic directors who engage in Miss Ophelia-styled "perfectly horrible" rhetoric, higher administrators who are salaried at least in part to keep us safe, and publicists who are supposed not to praise Caesar but to damn the unconscionable -- how many? Before they demonstrate that they don't just write books, pay lip service, or boast of safe citizenship -- but actually do step up morally, intellectually and bravely to assume responsibilities of leadership for such citizenship. How many?

How soon will confidence be restored to our university as a place where minds, souls and bodies can feel safe from agents, perpetrators and abettors of white privilege, irresponsibility, debauchery and violence?

Surely the answer to the question must come in the form of immediate dismissals of those principally responsible for the horrors of this spring moment at Duke. Coaches of the lacrosse team, the team itself and its players, and any other agents who silenced or lied about the real nature of events at 610 Buchanan on the evening of March 13, 2006. A day that, not even in a cliched sense, will, indeed, always live in infamy for this university.

A responsible, and in many instances appalled -- and yes, frightened -- citizenry of Duke University is waiting -- and certainly more than willing to join considered actions by bold leaders to restore confidence in a great institution and its mission. Today, I polled my class whose enrollment is predominantly women and white. All said that nothing had happened in terms of this university's response that had left them anything but afraid. The shame of this is unconscionable. Still, these women will surely sleep better this evening than the black woman injured at 610 Buchanan Boulevard by the white lacrosse team's out-of-control violent partying will ever again rest in her life.

Professor Houston A. Baker, Jr.
George D. and Susan Fox Beischer Professor of English
Editor, American Literature 

Houston Baker, Professor of English, Duke University. He has published a number of scholarly works including: Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing and Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)

[Brytani]

doesn't surprise me. This DA has not been forth coming with evidence, proof or even truth. He's spent weeks finding the team guilty in the press and now is in a position to back peddle.

Remember, the team wasn't cooperating? Now we learn they've given DNA, made statements, even requsted lie detector tests (rejected by the DA).

[ken5050]

FYI..according to a story in this weekend's NY Times Sports Section..all 46 who gave DNA samples also voluntarily had nude pics taken to show evidence of any scratches, scrapes, bruises, etc. tnat would be consistent with the rape story..

[george wythe]

I wouldn't believe Kimberly Guilfoyle if she told me my own name.

I wouldn't either. Her research assistants seems to be feeding her absolute crapola.

[Howlin]

No. He has to give them to them, period.

[TexKat]

Kimberly Guilfoyle

The Race Card - Fox News

I'd like to talk to you all about the allegations against the Duke University lacrosse team and the alleged victim in the case, a hired exotic dancer.

This is going to be one heck of a case to try, especially if police are unable to find any DNA evidence that would be a slam-dunk in the case against members of the team.

Why do you ask? Well, let's look at some aspects of the case:

First of all, she was called and went over to the party on her own — she was hired.

Defense attorneys will likely try to blame the alleged victim especially if prosecutors have evidence a gang rape occurred.

As for the jury, women may not be sympathetic to the victim. In my experience they may be very judgmental about what she was going to do while at the house.

The bottom line is that it's going to be an uphill battle for the prosecution. But even though there are those elements, don't discount race as being a key component to the case.

The jury in Durham won't be the upper crust students that attend prestigious Duke University. They will be the good folks of Durham, North Carolina, and the ethnic makeup of the jury — if this case does in fact go to trial — may make all the difference in the way it's ultimately decided.

There's a long process we still have to go through before there will be any conclusion.

That's the way I see it. Let me know what you think. Drop me an e-mail at thelineup@foxnews.com.

[Carolinamom]

The BLACK Professor has already decided that she is telling the truth and the team is guilty. Racial unity to the fore, I see. Why would HE feel the need to write anything at this point, absent evidence?

[twigs]

So, the DA is not cooperating? He is withholding results that may hurt his case, it looks to me. Without knowing the facts, which is always problematic in a case like this, here is what I think at this point. The DA wants to use this case to win re-election in a city that is about evenly divided between blacks and whites. There is underlying racial tension and economic tension between the "haves" and "have-nots" as evidenced by community response to Duke University. The DA waded into the thicket to exploit the lives of young men and women for his personal gain. Now, though, scientific evidence may not help his case, or at least make it as clearly as he had hoped. So he withholds it, allowing the trial to take place in the media. He's allowing others to do his work so that if and when it does go to trial, he will have an easier time of it. I hope this finishes his career. He has no business being a District Attorney.

[Howlin]

Could she have anymore PANCAKE on?

[TexKat]

Could she have anymore PANCAKE on?

If someone would scrape some of the gook off, we may have ourself a man, lmao!

[Howlin]

The gangs all here! I expect Al and Jesse any day now.