It's on the Observer site, but well hidden. You have to click on "A Section" first, for some reason. Here ya go:
A former Huntersville woman on Thursday admitted faking a hate crime at her home two years ago to collect insurance money.
Jaelynn Sealey, 35, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court, crying throughout the hearing. She will be sentenced in about two months and could face prison time.
She will have to repay $2,225 given to her family by neighbors and others when they thought someone had burned the Sealeys' car and painted racial slurs on their garage.
Within hours after Sealey called 911 on May 10, 2000, support began pouring in from her neighbors in the Wynfield subdivision. They held a rally, brought food, and helped wash the words off the garage.
On Thursday, Wynfield residents said they were glad to see the case coming to a close, but were still waiting for what they want most: an apology.
Police and experts say staged hate crimes are rare but not unheard of. They fear the incidents like the one in Huntersville will make people skeptical and less likely to support their neighbors if they are targeted because of their race or sexual orientation.
Sealey, who is black, admitted using gasoline to burn her 1999 Chevy Cavalier in her driveway and painting on a metal garage door, "Go Home N-----." The FBI arrested her more than a year later.
On Thursday, she pleaded guilty to four counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud and two counts of making false statements to federal investigators.
In exchange for her plea, the government agreed to drop one count of using a firearm to commit a felony. That charge carries a mandatory 10-year prison sentence.
Still, Sealey, who has moved to California, could face up to 45 years in federal prison and $2.25 million in fines.
She answered the judge's questions with "yes" or "no," sometimes in a barely audible voice. She declined to comment when the judge asked her if she had anything she wanted to say and then again after the hearing.
"At this point, I think both my client and the community want to put this behind us," Sealey's lawyer, Noell Tin, said. "I think the agreement is a reflection of that."
Tin said Sealey, who returned to California on Thursday night, declined to talk about why she made the fire look like a hate crime or whether she has expressed regret.
"I guess giving the money back is some sort of an apology, but I wish she'd say she's sorry," said neighborhood resident Cindy Dorman. "I'm sorry everything happened the way it did."
Dorman recalled a conversation at a rally where Sealey talked about the difficulty in explaining to her 10-year-old daughter that someone had hurt their family because of the color of their skin.
"It just crushed me," Dorman said. "Now it just makes me angry because it was such a ruse."
Though staged hate crimes are unusual in the Carolinas, authorities say such crimes have occurred in Mecklenburg in recent years.
Some have made the allegations to break leases; others have done it for financial gain, officials said.
Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said the FBI reports between 8,000 and 9,000 hate crimes a year, but that his organization believes the actual number is closer to 50,000. A very small percentage, he said, are faked.
"It makes people feel like hate crimes aren't real, and they are a very real and serious problem in the United States," he said.
More than 300 people attended the rally in support of the Sealeys, including the Huntersville police chief and a member of the NAACP's national board of directors.
Carolyn Wright, who helped organize the gathering, remembered that the racially diverse crowd all felt the same way: "That something like this should not happen here in Huntersville or anywhere."
In light of the community's initial response, Potok said, it's "particularly disturbing" to learn the attack was faked.
"It is a very good thing for the community to respond, and now this damages their civic pride or feeling of civic responsibility," he said. "You have to wonder if they would respond the same way if it happened again."
Residents said they hope the money will be given to a family in need or put to another good use. They also said they would react the same way if they received another report of a hate crime.
"If anybody has a problem, this community would certainly stand behind them. But I don't think it's going to happen again," said Will Dusek, who lives on the same street the Sealeys lived on. "It happened. It's over with. And we are moving on."
"Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said the FBI reports between 8,000 and 9,000 hate crimes a year, but that his organization believes the actual number is closer to 50,000. A very small percentage, he said, are faked."
Bovine effluvia, both with respect to the alleged numbers of "hate crimes" (a redundancy if ever there was one), and with respect to the "very small percentage" of hoaxes. Remember Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley? Ever notice that every time there's a fire at a black church or business, "hate crime" is immediately trumpeted? When, as is often the case, other causes are ascertained ("inside jobs" or accidents) are determined, the retractions of the accusations are hard to find. Even in this case, the "true story" will get 10% of the ink the "hate crime" assumption got.
Sorry for the brevity, but I'm getting ready to leave work... be back on FR on 8/19.
CD
100%...not some...not most....but 100% of the time where the TV cameras have gone out to watch the N-word being washed from a garage door it has turned out to be self-inflicted.