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."
The allegations of suicide attempts and other reports suggest this young woman may be suffering from depression. That is indeed a form of mental illness, but it is not one that makes a person an unreliable witness. It can cause symptoms of low self-esteem, hopelessness, lack of motivation and memory loss, but it doesn't generally cause people to distort reality.
There's nothing in the (so far entirely anecdotal) record to suggest that she suggers from any psychotic disorder, that she is schizophrenic, or is in any other way out of touch with reality or unable to accurately report events she has experienced.
It may be that such evidence will eventually turn up. It may also be that testimony will be presented that she is an habitual liar. Those things would be fair game. But I would be greatly surprised if the simple fact that she has suffered some depressive episodes would be allowed to be entered into evidence, because it simply is not relevant.
1) There's a difference between being suicidal and being "psycho". A suicidal person may very well be able to accurately recall events and situations.
2) LDT's are inadmissible in court. Their only purpose for a DA might be to determine if the case is worth persuing.
3) You conveniently ignore the physical evidence. Trash the victim all you want, but if the physical evidence points to rape, the prosecution is still in the driver's seat.
I remember a case here in Texas where a man was convicted of raping a woman *while* she was a patient in a mental hospital. Clearly the judge didn't agree with your assessment that "crazy" people are not entitled to equal protection under the law.
Of course a man who accuses someone of rape is subject to his truthfulness being questioned. That is what a trial is about, does the state have reliable evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
isn't it true that if you have had allegations against you, even been tried in a court of law, but aquited, that the jury will never hear of those allegations....?
Heck the fact that a man or a woman has been previously convicted of rape will as I understand it not come before the jury. The courts have ruled such information is too prejudical. The question at issue is whether or not the person committed the act charged this time.
You may believe this is wrong and I might agree with you some of the time. But the point that you seem to be missing is this is not a civil case where a woman is taking a man to court. This is a criminal case where the state of Colorado wants to take away the liberty of a man. We require a high level of proof for the state to take away a person's liberty. Other countries require less proof. Each can judge for themselves about what system is best.
The woman was only a liability to the hotel if she was in fact mentally ill to the point where she was unable to perform her duties or was endangering the guests.
As to the job application -- how the heck do you know she lied on her application? Do you even know if the job application had any questions about health history? The fact that the hotel has not moved to dismiss her (as far as anyone knows) suggests that they don't think she has done anything that would warrant termination.
And as I said, I was not accusing Bryant of being a sexual predator. The fact that others are not popping out of the woodwork to accuse him of similar acts means only that no one has made a public accusation to that effect. This could mean there are no such people with accusations to make. It could mean that previous victims were bought off. It could mean that they have privately contacted the D.A., and have been asked to stay quiet, on the grounds that it is unethical to try the case in the media. And NONE of it has anything to do with what happened ON THAT NIGHT, IN THAT HOTEL. Every rapist has a first victim. If Bryant is guilty, it is possible that this woman is his first victim.
However, no one has suggested that this woman has that sort of illness. Her alleged suicide attempt (or attempts -- and remember that this is all still based on anecdotes recited in the media), if they happened, appear to have been in response to stressors in her life -- things she experienced in the real world, that she was unable to cope with. That is why I think her diagnosis (if she has one at all) is depression. And that just doesn't make her an unreliable witness to events she experienced, no matter how much you want to conflate it with things like schizophrenia or personality disorder.
But in the absence of a conviction, there is no victim-only an accuser.
And consent is the backbone of any man's defense to this charge.
Since the accuser (not the "victim") seeks to undermine the defense of consent, what else is there to try but her credibility? And what else can the fact-trier(s) use to judge her credibility but her history?
How can these be off limits when they are the only things that can be used to establish her credibility with regard to consent?
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt of this felony requires corroboration.
Also, even if there is an acquittal, there could still be a victim. Scenario: Guy walks into your liquor store wearing a mask, holds you up at gunpoint and cleans out the cash register. Cops arrest someone. We go to trial, and the guy is acquitted. But you are still a crime victim, despite the acquittal. Maybe the cops got the wrong guy. Or maybe they got the right guy, but didn't have enough evidence, or the prosecutor screwed up the case.
In other words, "not guilty" is not the same thing as "innocent". And an acquittal of a particular defendant doesn't mean that no crime was committed.
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