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Brawley later converted to Islam and changed her name to Maryam Muhammad

Tawana Brawley controversy

On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl, was found smeared with feces, lying in a garbage bag, her clothing torn and burned and with various slurs and epithets written on her body in charcoal. Brawley claimed she had been assaulted and raped by six white men, some of them police officers, in the village of Wappingers Falls, New York.

Attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason joined Sharpton in support of Brawley. A grand jury was convened; after seven months of examining police and medical records, the jury determined that Brawley had fabricated her story. Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason accused the Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of racism and of being one of the perpetrators of the alleged abduction and rape. The three were successfully sued for slander and ordered to pay $345,000 in damages, the jury finding Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two, and Mason for one.

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Tawana claimed she had been repeatedly raped by a group of white men but could provide no names or descriptions of her assailants. She later told others that there had been no rape, only other kinds of sexual abuse. Forensic tests found no evidence that a sexual assault of any kind had occurred. Nor was there any evidence of exposure to elements, which would be expected in a victim held for several days in the woods at a time when the temperature dropped below freezing at night.

There were other discrepancies in Tawana’s story. On the morning after the alleged abduction, she was seen entering the empty apartment at Pavillion where she had once lived. Other witnesses claimed to have seen her at parties in a nearby town during the period when she was “missing.” She had no bruises, contusions, scratches or other injuries except for a small bruise behind the left ear, which was determined to be several days old. One witness claimed to have seen her climb into the garbage bag in which she was found. Her mother, Glenda Brawley, was spotted at the apartment complex shortly before Tawana was seen getting into the garbage bag; the mother waited until that same afternoon to report Tawana’s “disappearance” to the police. The investigation turned up evidence to indicate that the damage done to Tawana’s clothing had occurred in the apartment. According to the grand jury report, all of “the items and instrumentalities necessary to create the condition in which Tawana Brawley appeared on Saturday, November 28, were present inside of or in the immediate vicinity of Apartment 19A.” The feces had come from a neighbor’s dog.

Grand jury hearings

On October 6, 1988, the Abrams Grand Jury released its extensive and thorough 170-page report concluding Tawana Brawley had not been abducted, assaulted, raped and sodomized as had been claimed by Brawley and her advisors. The report further concluded that the “unsworn public allegations against Dutchess County Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones” were false and had no basis in fact. To issue the report, the Grand Jury heard from 180 witnesses, saw 250 exhibits and recorded more than 6,000 pages of testimony. [3]

In the decision, the grand jury noted many problems with Brawley’s story. Among these were the results of the rape kit, which did not indicate sexual assault. Also, despite her claim of having been held captive for days, Brawley was not suffering from exposure, was well nourished, and appeared to have brushed her teeth recently. There were no burns on her body, despite her clothing being charred. A shoe she was wearing was cut through, yet she had sustained no injuries to her foot. The racial epithets written on her were upside-down, which led to suspicion that Brawley herself wrote the words. Testimony from her schoolmates indicated she had attended a local party during the time of her supposed abduction, and one witness claimed to have observed Brawley climbing into the garbage bag. [4]

A total of 180 witnesses were called during the hearings. Brawley herself never testified.

Aftermath

Brawley and her mother were issued subpoenas to appear in front of the grand jury but refused to testify. This may have prompted Brawley and her family to move hastily to Virginia, taking with them a “defense fund” of $300,000 which had been contributed by well-wishers. There remains an outstanding warrant in New York against the two for ignoring the subpoena.

The case still hangs over Sharpton, particularly following his entry into mainstream politics (in his race for the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, he addressed the nominating convention from its podium), not merely because he defended Brawley’s story well after its veracity came into question but for the unfounded accusations he leveled, and, according to some of his critics, his “playing the race card.”

Alton Maddox was disbarred by the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on May 21, 1990, after failing to appear before a disciplinary hearing to answer allegations regarding his conduct in the Brawley case.[6] Brawley later converted to Islam and changed her name to Maryam Muhammad. [7]

In 1998, Pagones was awarded $345,000 (he sought $150 million) through a lawsuit for defamation of character that he had brought against Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason, in which the jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two and Mason for one. The jury deadlocked on four of the 22 statements over which Pagones had sued, and eight statements were found non-defamatory. [8]

Pagones had also sued Brawley. She defaulted by not appearing at the trial, and the judge ordered her to pay him damages of $185,000. As of 2003, none of the award had been paid.