Posted on 07/26/2003 7:48:48 PM PDT by Recourse
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ESPN.com: NBA | |
Saturday, July 26, 2003
Teen craves spotlight, but friends say not like this
EAGLE, Colo. -- The profile of the young woman emerges as if in silhouette.
Kobe Bryant's accuser remains anonymous, her identity protected as an alleged sexual assault victim, her voice not heard to tell her side of the story. Details of her life, coming from friends and police reports and cast in the half-light of reflected celebrity, create an enigmatic image.
Some see the slender 19-year-old with shoulder-length blond hair and a sweet smile as energetic, upbeat and confident -- a peppy cheerleader and spirited singer in school shows who had aspirations of stardom.
Others in this middle-class, Rocky Mountain town of 3,500 -- where bored teens hang out at the Texaco station, then drive off to party through the night in the hills -- describe her as a showoff, "a total starve for attention," as one ex-boyfriend put it.
"It doesn't matter if (the attention) was good or bad," Josh Putnam said. "It was always good to her."
| “ | I correlate it to throwing a pebble into a pond and then you have a ripple effect. When something's high-profile, your ripples get bigger and bigger and bigger. The higher profile it is, the greater the potential victim base. ” | |
| — Attorney Krista Flannigan |
Friends call her honest, trustworthy and strong, "one of the toughest people I know," according to Luke Bray, a 21-year-old construction worker whose wife has known her since second grade.
"She can't believe the things that people in her own town are saying about her," he said. "She's going to be a victim a second time, a third time, a fourth time, every day for the rest of her life. But she knows the truth and can handle it."
Yet several former friends doubt her allegations against Bryant, saying she is impulsive, vindictive and emotionally fragile.
Her freshman year at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, a farm community 60 miles north of Denver, was interrupted Feb. 25 when she was rushed to a hospital by ambulance. Campus police chief Terry Urista said his office received a call about 9 p.m. that night regarding a woman in a dormitory room.
"An officer determined she was a danger to herself," Urista said, identifying the woman by name but refusing to characterize the episode as a suicide attempt. "It's classified as a mental health issue," he said.
Lindsey McKinney, who lived at the woman's family's house this spring before the two had a falling out, said her former friend tried to kill herself at school by overdosing on sleeping pills and overdosed again at home in May, little more than a month before she alleged Bryant assaulted her.
The woman was distraught over a breakup with her boyfriend and the recent death of a girlfriend in a car accident, McKinney said.
The contrast between the gregarious, seemingly happy image so many friends have of the woman and the histrionic, troubled side others describe is stark and hard to reconcile.
She is less visible these days, her friends say, staying home most of the time, unless she's driving to meetings at her attorney's office in nearby Avon. She still visits friends but has been warned by authorities not to talk about the case.
Sexual assault victims often worry about being blamed, said Krista Flannigan, an attorney and victim advocate working for the district attorney in the Bryant case.
"Fear, anxiety, some form of guilt, sadness, anger, vulnerability-- those come and go," Flannigan said. "Some are more intense than others, depending on what their past life experiences have been, what their current support systems are, what their past support systems have been."
A high-profile case, she said, affects the victim and her community with greater intensity.
"I correlate it to throwing a pebble into a pond and then you have a ripple effect," Flannigan said. "When something's high-profile, your ripples get bigger and bigger and bigger. The higher profile it is, the greater the potential victim base."
In this case, the ripples are reaching far beyond the woman's family -- her retired father and mother and two brothers. They are touching virtually everyone in this tiny town, down the valley from resort-rich Vail.
What everyone agrees on is that she had a passion and talent for singing. She wrote songs and kept telling people she would be famous someday.
She traveled with McKinney last fall to Austin, Texas, to audition for the TV show "American Idol." The two slept outside for 12 hours to win wristbands that ensured audition spots.
Involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with a boyfriend from Eagle, the woman chose a song by country singer Rebecca Lynn Howard called "Forgive," about a woman stung by infidelity, wondering how to respond when her lover asks her to say she forgives him.
The refrain of the song is: "Well, that's a mighty big word for such a small man, and I'm not sure I can, 'cause I don't even know who I am, it's too soon for me to say forgive."
McKinney thought her friend's rendition was beautiful, but neither of them got past the first round.
Though many friends believe the woman is telling the truth when she says Bryant assaulted her June 30 in his room at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, where she recently had begun working at the front desk, McKinney has her doubts.
"I almost think she is doing it for the attention," she said. "She craves attention like no other. This is the bad kind of attention that she's going to get. I'm not saying it didn't happen. But it just doesn't fit the puzzle."
But Sara Dabner, 17, sees it differently. To her, Bryant's accuser is like a big sister, befriending her on a high school choir trip to Disneyland and helping her through personal problems. She and other friends took the woman out to see the movie "Bad Boys II" after charges were announced against Bryant.
The notion that the woman would make up the allegations strikes Dabner as preposterous.
"Why would a woman put herself through all of this -- having people call her names?" she said, noting that her friend didn't even know who Bryant was when he first arrived at the hotel. "She's not trying to drag him through the dirt," Dabner said. "She just wants justice."
I love it when feminists start spouting off about how evil men are, because you just know that somewhere in their life some guy treated them lousy, and now they want to get back at all men because of it. The nice thing about your case is that I don't even have to guess at the source of your irrational vemon, as you have provided it for me...
Fortunately you are wrong in the above. The people are guarranteed by the US Constitution the right to know what the government is up to. The Constitution is afterall a document granting few powers to the state and explicitly restricting the state.
So in fact the US Constitution explicitly in the Bill of Rights guarrantees that the representatives of the public including the person you were talking too, the press, has the right to know the name of the accuser who must publically come forward at the time of the trial.
Now some times some parts of the press decide not to publish the name of the accuser. That is not to inform the public. Rarely does all the press adopt this view. And that has been the case in the current case, some of the press have identified the accuser and some have not.
Or perhaps I am wrong and you were talking about some other Constitution.
I totally disagree .... I cite the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights .... free press .... unless you believe in secret courts .... your statement is wrong.
Unless the court case is sealed, something which is very unusual, I have every right to go to the courthouse and check out the files of this governmental proceeding. Whether a private newspaper chooses to report it is a different matter.
When you can show me the Constitutional right to make criminal accusations anonymously, I'll rethink my position.
Only when my rights were violated .... perhaps you do not care about rights ..... but I once swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies ....
Where above does it say that anyone other than the accused has guarranteed rights in this process?
The people are guarranteed by the US Constitution the right to know what the government is up to.
So in fact the US Constitution explicitly in the Bill of Rights guarrantees that the representatives of the public including the person you were talking too, the press, has the right to know the name of the accuser who must publically come forward at the time of the trial.
Bulls**t! Show me that in the Constitution. Or is it in the emanations of some penumbra?
It's a lousy argument that admits there are exceptions right in the first sentence. Many jurisdictions have STATUTES that specifically withhold the defendants name until after the trial. What obligation does the court have to you to identify the accuser before the trial? After the trail, who cares (because the matter has been adjudicated). But beforehand, only the accused needs that information...
Show me where in the Constitution that govenment is compelled to force otherwise. Nothing in the Constitution guarrantees anyone other than the accused the right to know...
you do know don't you that both his girl and the DA have been threatened , don't you?
so how does it help the cause of "justice" if the prosecutor and/or he victim are physically harmed...
the court system knows who the victim is....there is no need for you nor I to know who she is....
we have become a nation of voyeurs........
I presume you were fully acquitted -- was the sex consensual with your accuser, or were you not even intimate with her? What was the key to proving you innocent?
Remember, you brought it up.
The First Amendment gives the press the right to publish, it doesn't force them to publish what they don't want to print or find morally wrong to print. The Globe has already published a picture of the girl and no one stepped in to stop them. If the papers have the decency to decide not to, however, as is the case here, the Constitution has nothing to say about it. It's not your business.
Oh, and I don't put much stock in your oath to the Constitution, seeing as how you don't seem to have any idea what's in it...
Really? And they have secret trials? I'd love to read those statutes if you have them handy.
In your constitutional view, should all spectator seats be removed from the courtrooms? Should I not be able to go check out court files? Should all those pesky laws about open government be scrapped?
Do you personally know any of those women?
no one has made accusations annonymously.....
repeat...there are no annoymous accusations.....
Yes.
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