Osiris
04-26-2006, 08:37 AM
Jesse Jackson: Captain Save-A-Ho, Skrippology, Deconstructing the Duke Rape Case
According to some reports I’ve read, Jesse Jackson and his organization, (here is an essay by Jesse Jackson (http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/commentary.cfm?ArticleID=4990)) Rainbow Coalition/PUSH or whatever, is offering to pay tuition for the stripper who alleged she was raped by members Duke University’s lacrosse team (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/16/duke.jackson.ap/). Jesse can always be depended on to fuck shit up, but this is kind of above and beyond just fucking up. Jesse’s trying to play Captain Save-a-Ho, and that’s not going to work out so well. Where was this scholarship BEFORE old girl was on the pole? That would have been the time to offer her a merit award or a grant of some sort. Paying tuition, regardless of how this turns out, sends a bad message: that victimhood, in and of itself, real or alleged, is the way to a come-up on payday. What about all the rest of the skrippers? They need tuition too. Is the Rainbow PUSH Coalition gonna start a Keep Our Daughters Off The Pole Fund? Like money is the only reason women strip. C’mon.
The Black journo illumanati are busy trying to hang the white boys and find a way to blame stripper culture on hip-hop instead of asking the important questions, like why stripping has become a viable vocation in the first place. Here’s a hint: it’s got nothing to do with hip-hop. Daddy: if your daughter becomes a stripper, you lost. Failed as a father and dominant influence in your daughter’s life. You did not give her enough attention. Ladies: young girls learn the power of their bodies from their primary role model: their mothers. You.
That sounds awful to say, but it’s not hip-hop’s, the black man’s or Nipsey Russell’s fault if your daughter is a stripper. Before you dismiss that, really, REALLY think about it. Single moms bouncing from this cat to that cat, finagling bread from this one and that one. That’s not every single mom, but there are a lot of hoodrat baby-mama’s out there, and some of their daughters grow up to be strippers. Now, you say you can’t be you’re your lil girl 24/7, so you stick her in front of the tube and want to blame Jay-Z or Snoop Dogg for turning her out. You think it’s cute when your 4 year-old daughter can pop her butt like Beyonce’? Think again. If BET or MTV has more influence over your daughter than you do, you should put her up for adoption. Square Biz.
The number one reason a lot of women start stripping is because their self-esteem is so low, they don’t feel like they have anything else to offer the world. They have been taught from an early age to use their body to solicit attention and the favor of men. Instead of using looks as just another asset, it becomes the primary currency. Some are either too lazy or too shackled to their own esteem issues to pursue anything else. A small minority have always dreamed of having men stick dollar bills in the crack of their ass. Only about a third of the sisters you see up there are paying for tuition, and probably less than half of them graduate. None have any idea that they are now stained for life. Any man taking a stripper off the pole is gonna find himself getting tricked-out, one way or the next. Because there is a whole pathology that goes with stripping: a disconnect from honor, dignity and shame. Smart chicks get in, get paid, and get out. Some linger too long, and go under.
Some of you all were mad at the izza (yo nigga) for suggesting that skrippers are something less than virtuous. In the meantime, turns out that the other skripper in the Duke case called a PR firm trying to figure out how to maximize this for her own gain (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192628,00.html). Now, that is some sheisty stripper-type shit. Like, forget the fact that my girl may have gotten raped, it’s time to get paid. She’s quoted as saying that this episode may make her unable to work, and she has figure out the angles to feed her daughter.
Right.
One of the biggest misnomers going is that strippers and call girls have no other options. Dude—what about trying to manage the dollar store or the Lane Bryant at the mall? Why not try to score up on some scholarships and grants by getting good grades? You not afraid to get a car loan for that '89 Hyundai---loan up on some school money. Why not get a job working on-campus? How is it that other moms manage to feed their kids and keep their clothes on? Gimme a break. Now, to be sure, retail, customer service or office work is not as glamorous as having old white men stick dollar bills in your asscrack, but those gigs might afford a little more dignity and self-respect. And working at WalMArt, it seems unlikely that someone will squirt skeet on you as you walk by thier table.
Yeah, I stripped. Hood bacherlorette parties and shit. That low-end macking was bad look, and I gratefully got smart and copped out of that game. Besides, when big fat women get drunk and run out of paper money, they start throwing coins at your privates for sport. And that hurts. Or, so I’m told.
For female strippers, that life is hard. It takes a lot out of them. Many of those chicks lose themselves on the pole, and no amount of education or church can redeem them. Once you get up on the pole, it has a way of following you for the rest of your life, one way or another. Like it or not, we are defined in life by the choices we make, and how we live through them. And there are other choices in life besides being a stripper. I’m sympathetic, but I reject wholesale the spin that this is a poor college student just trying to make a living and support her kids. That’s a romantic notion, but it’s bullshit.
I thought I put ya'll up in the game, but by popular demand, let me breakdown a little more Skrippology.
Skrippology
Ok.
DISCLAIMER:
Some of the language used and situations outlined may offend those with genteel sensibilities. I doubt I am busting any atoms here, though.
Onward.
Truth to tell, unless they are working at a platinum club, club stripper don’t make a ton of money. And there are only a few ways to make big, big money working at platinum joints. Outcall strippers do pretty well—way better than the girls in the club (unless the girl prostitutes for the club, which rarely is the case). Why? Simple economics.
Strippers rent the stage—this is called “payout”. Women rent the stage to see how much men will pay them to dance seductively, show a little affection and take their clothes off. Clubs make money off the door and inflated drink prices. Before a stripper makes any money, she has to make payout. Now, at your neighborhood shake joint where the women have moustaches, waist-length breast and topographical maps to StretchTown on their tummies, the payout is not gonna be much. ‘Bout 100, 150 dollars, if that. Closer to 75. Hell, they should pay you to look at that stuff. But if the club has running water and lights, then the payout is gonna be pretty high. Like 200. Two fifty. Sometimes that’s per day, sometimes that’s per week, depending on the market you live in. Platinum clubs charge much, much more for stage time. Now, club strippers get in a trick bag where they make payout, but not a whole lot more than that. What are they to do? Well, there are lap-dances, bar-top conversation and, of course, the Champagne Room.
But first there is you--Trick Daddy—and you’re freshly-cashed paycheck. You enter and every girl in the place looks at you, what you are wearing and instantly figures the angles on how to break you for your knot. A good stripper can look at you and know to the dollar how much money is in your pocket. Square Biz, homie. Don't come blinged-up, cause you might be pawning that on some pussy. These chicks--the pros-- DO NOT PLAY. Smart dudes chuckle to themselves while they sit at the bar, work on their manuscript and let the tricks pay those ladies to take their clothes off. Or so I’ve heard. I guess, having been a talent, it’s hard for me to look at the client of a service like this objectively. I don’t mean any harm to anyone’s person.
So.
Lap-dances are cheap, but let’s get back to that. Bar-top conversation is when you are sitting at the bar, sucking on a Pabst, and the strippers walks up to you like she’s your long-lost girlfriend, sits next to you and starts spittin’ game, and then casually asks you to buy her a drink. Well, as it turns out, it ends up being 20, 30, or 40 dollar drink. About half of that goes to payout, other half to the bar. She pays a lot of her pay-out with this maneuver. So she asks you if you want a lapdance. Ten dollars, all day. So this only lasts for about a song, and you can’t touch her in most states. But she can touch you and does—in a thoroughly illegal manner—and grabs your Johnson by either reaching between her legs or reaching around her back, out of view of vice cops or Action News spy cameras. This is known as the Lefty, The Handey, or more commonly the “Reach Around”. Less often, she will pull your member from out of your pants and stimulate it. To be sure, there are variations. But the thing is to get you excited, as in hard and horny. Now that you could pitch a tent, next thing you know, there is an invitation to the Champagne Room.
Here is where you have to pay attention.
You know your girlfriend, the stripper, homie? I know you love her, and I know she tells you that it’s just dancing. But a lot of chicks are barely making payout. Chicks can make good money taking thier clothes off, but the economy being what it is, it’s easy to plateau. If your girl strips and does private shows, I don’t care what she tells you: it goes down in the Champagne Room. The only reason there is a Champagne Room is to break off a trick for between 50 and 200 dollars (glass or bottle of “sparkling wine”, sometimes you can buy a steak(ums)dinner for 40 dollars) just to get in the room for you and her to negotiate on how much money it will take for her to get to know your wiener a little better. That’s it. There is no cogent conversation on world politics jumping off in the Champagne Room (aka the VIP, Boo-Boom Room, or Peep Show Stall). CNN isn't streaming on the TV set in there. Why do you think there are wet-wipes in there, man? For the wing sauce? C’mon. So, you came in the club with about 600 dollars, but now you leaving on your way to the Arab check loan spot, because you can’t feed a parking meter with what them girls left in your pockets. Congratulations, player. You’re the king of the bar.
Now occasionally, club strippers can't make pay-out. For weeks at a time. Some bars will fire the chick or give her a chance to do some out calls (aka escorts,et al)---which have a guaranteed take and will enable you to do like, 4 of them and come out crazy-fat in the pockets. The percentage taken is usually very small. Lucky her, right?. Now, on outcalls. Smart girls—like 60 percent—are not turning tricks. Because the base money for the call is really good enough. And there is a high likelihood that chicks turning tricks will get pinched. But for just stripping, like two hundred clams for an hour’s work? That’s average, and that's not bad. There are all kinds of things strippers do to tack on to the price that don’t involve turning a trick (sex toy shows, lingierie shows, etc). Greedy chicks? Well, they turn tricks. They are breaking dudes off for 6, 7, 8 hundred dollar twirls. Nomatter what, Professional Girls go on out calls with A Car, which includes a dude, his stopwatch, and probably a baseball bat, pepper-spray, black-jack and/or a pistol to whoop down a trick if he has to. Smart out-call strippers DO NOT DRIVE THEMSELVES TO JOBS. This is crazy, crazy dangerous. If you are dolo and a girl drives up to your door alone--dude--she is strapped and you may be about to be robbed. With two girls come and you are dolo, you are taking your life in your hands. Smart out-call girls also don’t accept drinks from tricks, as these drinks are often laced with date-rape drugs. As in, more times than not. Smart out-call girls don’t do college parties or bachelor parties without security. Two Cars, minimum. Never, ever. NEVER, EVER. Some of these speakeasy joints have out-call services. Those chicks are hoodrats, and often underage. They cut corners to maximize profits. And when you call them, you may be about to get robbed, extorted or arrested. Also: CHECK THE NECK, homie. Don't get caught getting a handy from Andy. The new lick is hood agencies employing transvestites, taking pictures of you in the moment, and then extorting you for money. That's pretty inventive, I must say. Republican White House can really make people resourceful, huh?
What I think happened in the Duke rape case:
There are reports that the white boys offered both girls a drink (ALERT ALERT DANGER DANGER) and one girl didn’t drink it (Kim Roberts, the OTHER one). The alleged victim began to behave irrationally AFTER she had the drink, say reports. So. I think someone slipped the alleged victim a Mickey and sexually assaulted her. I think the boys had planned this assault, and were condomed up. I think she was too doped up to accurately identify the assailants. I think she fell on the stairs because she was doped, and this accounts for (some) of her visible injuries. I think witnesses after the fact may have thought she was drunk because she was drugged and behaving strangely, as in, knocked the fuck out.
CRYSTAL BALL: What I think will happen with the Duke rape case
This story will set off a dialog about stripper culture, sexual assault, race and class (aka the New White Privilege™ or the Original Race Card™). I think a good defense attorney will use the alleged victim’s sordid past to create reasonable doubt. He’ll succeed. She's a hoodrat, bouncing from man to man (one of them was illiterate)with a history of doing crazy, stripper-type shit. The boys, marked as “dope-and-grope”-ers, will go on to be captains of industry. One may run for office. The alleged victim will move, change her name and never finish college. The other stripper will use the notoriety to start a career in porn. We’ll all be confused and conflicted because there are no angels in this story.
I think we aren’t knowing how to feel about hood-rats strippers with criminal pasts who allege rape. I think this isn’t a Tawana Brawley case—SOMETHING clearly happened. But sadly, it could very easily be. None of the players in this scenario are particularly credible: Strippers are, after all, professional liars. These white boys, lawyered-up with the best defense money can buy, have been lying since they could talk. After all, you really have to lie to yourself to feel superior to others. The lie you tell yourself is the biggest lie of all. These boys probably feel insulated and entitled to lie to protect themselves. Why do I say this? I know white boys, man. No homo.
The truth? I think we will never know what happened. Because you can’t trust rich white brats. And you can’t trust stripper hoodrats. With a little political backstory to boot. This story is the Perfect Storm.
The case will become Bizzaro O.J.: some white folks will cheer when the boys get off, while much of Black America will standby angry and confused. At some point white America will ask aloud why these good white boys would want to see ghetto black girls naked in the first place, and then it’ll get ugly. Or informative. Or both.
I think we’ll all gonna feel a little dirty before it’s over.
I lifted a really, really thorough piece about the accuser from the News Observer. Also, a good joint from Newsweek. Sorry about the wacky formatting.
NEXT ENTRY: ?
Mother, dancer, accuser
Duke scandal peels back layers of Durham woman's identity
SAMIHA KHANNA, Staff Writer
She is a 27-year-old mother of two who married young, served in the Navy and was once in serious trouble because of an episode of drunken driving and assault that left her with a criminal record. On the campus of N.C. Central University, where she is a full-time student, few people know her.
Today she may be the nation's best-known unnamed person. She is the woman whose report of rape at a Duke lacrosse team party, where she had been hired to dance, has riveted people here in her hometown and far beyond.
The accusation in the early hours of March 14 launched a police investigation. Defense lawyers say they expect the case to go before a grand jury Monday.
Although there are no formal charges, the allegations have prompted a vigorous defense by lawyers for lacrosse team members and have divided the Duke campus and the Durham community over nearly every aspect of the case, including the credibility of the woman who brought the accusation.
Lawyers for the players cite results of court-ordered tests that showed that no DNA from team members was found on the woman. They also cite 911 recordings that describe the woman as passed out and drunk. They say her condition at the time would affect her ability to identify the men she says attacked her.
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong and police insisted early on that they had evidence of a crime, including a medical exam reporting injuries consistent with sexual assault. Nifong says he believes the woman, whose account is the heart of the evidence revealed so far.
Adding further divisiveness is that the woman is black, and she has accused three white men. That has drawn race, class and privilege into the debate.
The woman has given just one interview, speaking to a News & Observer reporter March 24. Since then, The N&O has spoken to former classmates and neighbors, friends and family members, and has examined several official documents where her name appears.
'She was quiet'
The petite, soft-spoken woman is described by friends as a caring mother and a hard worker. According to people who have talked with her about her studies at NCCU, she also is a serious student who recently received an A in a difficult course.
The youngest of three children raised in a working-class Durham neighborhood, she graduated from Hillside High School in 1996, according to her family. A school yearbook photo from her senior year shows a girl with chin-length black braids and dark brown eyes. Her lips are pursed in a shy smile.
The News & Observer is not naming her or her family members because it is the paper's policy not to identify people listed as victims of sexual assault on police reports.
"She usually kept to herself," said Frederica Thomas, 27, a classmate from Hillside. "She was quiet. ... When I saw her, she was usually with her sister." The sister, who is a year older, is described by former neighbors and family members as a smart overachiever.
The older sister attended NCCU, and her younger sister had plans to follow in her path after high school, according to family members and neighbors.
Those plans were delayed when she met a man 14 years her senior. The man, who became her husband (they later divorced), said in an interview the woman's parents didn't approve of the relationship. Neighbors say the parents expected their daughter to go to college.
With aspirations to travel the world, the former husband said, she signed up in the fall of 1996 for an eight-year enlistment -- two years of active duty followed by six years in the reserves. She began active duty in the summer of 1997 and was sent to school in Dam Neck, Va., near Virginia Beach, to train for her job operating radios and navigation equipment.
That fall, the couple got married in Virginia Beach. The union would allow the woman's husband to travel wherever the woman was stationed, he said.
The former husband said he was illiterate when he married the then-19-year-old woman. She taught him to read, he said, and was kind and patient during the process. After months of tutoring and many evenings spent paging through beginning-level books, he said, he was finally able to fill out his own job applications.
"She never downed me for that," he said. "She loved me for who I was." He said he saw her after the accusations of rape were reported and she appeared distressed.
As newlyweds, the couple moved to Concord, Calif., where the woman was assigned to the USS Mount Hood, an ammunition ship. She was often away at sea for days or weeks, and tensions flared in the marriage, her former husband said. "She was young," he said.
Along the way, the woman became interested in another sailor, a man who would later father her children, the former husband said. The two separated as the new relationship began, he said. Six months later, she was discharged from the service.
A U.S. Navy spokesman would not release the reason for the discharge, though records indicate it came less than nine months before she had her first child, a boy, named after his father.
Court records show the divorce became final after she gave birth. She continued her relationship with the sailor, and the two had a second child. Soon after, the couple parted ways. In 2003, the children's father was ordered by a Durham court to have a portion of his paycheck, about $400 a month, withheld for child support, court records show. He was also ordered to pay more than $2,700 in public assistance to the children.
Back in Durham, where her parents still live, the woman tried several jobs to support her children, including working in an assembly line for a computer company and various sales jobs, her former husband said.
In trouble with the law
One summer night in 2002, excessive drinking led to charges that the woman stole a car and led officers on a reckless car chase.
The episode started at the Diamond Girls club on Angier Avenue in Durham. According to Larry W. Jones, the owner of Diamond Girls, the woman appeared at the club that night and "tried out," giving lap dances to a few men.
Jones said the manager at the time did not offer the woman a job because she was "acting funny."
She started dancing for a taxi driver, whom she asked for a ride, according to a report from the Durham County Sheriff's Office. While dancing, she took the keys from the driver's pocket without his knowledge and, minutes later, drove off in his taxi.
The cab driver called 911 and a sheriff's deputy responded and saw the blue 1992 Chevrolet Caprice heading east on Angier Avenue near Page Road. The headlights were off and the woman was driving on the wrong side of the road, according to the deputy's report.
The woman sped up to pass the officer, and he began to chase the taxi, which ran a stop sign and veered across the road, weaving across a grass median, onto the shoulder and back. The car sped from Angier Avenue onto U.S. 70, the report said.
According to the report, the woman drove down the center of the highway, a 55 mph zone, at 70 mph, heading into Raleigh. She kept speeding, drove the wrong way down Brier Creek Parkway and turned into a dead end, where she tried to drive the taxi through a fence.
The sheriff's deputy said he got out of his car and told the woman to turn off the car. She laughed, backed up the car, then drove forward again and nearly hit the deputy, the report said.
The taxi slammed into the deputy's car and kept going, turning back onto Brier Creek Parkway into oncoming traffic, the report said. Another deputy continued to chase her until the taxi got a flat tire. Officers boxed in the car, pulled the woman out and arrested her.
Her blood alcohol level was 0.19, according to court records, more than twice the legal limit to drive in North Carolina.
The woman was charged with driving while impaired, driving with a revoked license, felony speeding to elude arrest, felony assault with a deadly weapon on a government official, and felony larceny of a motor vehicle. Court documents and her criminal and driving records show that her driver's license had been revoked before the incident, but they do not indicate why.
Under a deal with prosecutors, she pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors in the car chase: larceny, speeding to elude arrest, assault on a government official and DWI, according to court records. She was required to serve three consecutive weekends in jail and was placed on two years' probation. She paid restitution and court costs, and completed her probation.
Woody Vann, a Durham lawyer who defended the woman, said recently that when the case went to court in 2003, he was ready to present 10 character witnesses for his client. She struck him as responsible because she admitted wrongdoing in the case, he said.
Facing obstacles
Rebounding from the incident, the woman tried a job at a nursing home, following in the footsteps of her older sister, who had taken on similar work.
In the summer of 2004, she landed a position at a rest home. But the job was short-lived, because part of her employee file was missing. When she didn't receive a paycheck after a few weeks of work, she filed a complaint with the Durham County Sheriff's Office. Her employer told her to submit a criminal record in order to get paid, the report said. No further action was taken by either party to resolve the issue, the report said.
Her criminal record -- the misdemeanors and traffic charges from the 2002 event -- never stood in the way of her getting other jobs, the woman's father said in an interview.
The father said he did not know that she had taken a job with an escort service until after she made the rape allegations. In an earlier interview, the woman said she thought he knew about the job.
The former husband said that when they were married, they fell behind on bills. His former wife, he said, suggested she take a job dancing; she would be nearly nude but would make some quick money. She visited a club but decided she wasn't ready for that kind of work, he said.
He said he worked during the marriage, but not steadily. "I couldn't fault a woman for taking care of her family and trying to pay the bills," he said.
The night of March 13
The March 13 lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. was supposed to net her $400, according to lawyers for the lacrosse players. But the dancing lasted only a few minutes, according to the woman, police and lawyers for the players.
The woman said she and another dancer sent by a second escort service stopped dancing because several men at the party yelled a racial slur. In a court document used to obtain DNA samples from lacrosse team members, the woman said one man in the room threatened to sexually assault her with a broom handle.
Lawyers for the players say the dancing stopped because the woman now making the rape allegations was too impaired to perform. They say they have photos and video showing she was impaired, and they say no sexual assault occurred at the party.
On March 24, when The News & Observer reported that 46 lacrosse players had been ordered to submit DNA, the woman spent the morning inside her parents' home as her two young children explored the yard.
As she stepped off the screened-in porch, a gym bag slung over one shoulder, she was met by a reporter. Upon learning that reports of her allegations had surfaced in the newspaper, she put a hand over her mouth and gasped. Tears welled in her eyes.
She reported the incident, she said, because many men don't believe forcing a woman to have sex is a "big deal." She pulled her 7-year-old son toward her on the sidewalk.
"I'm just trying to get on with my life," she said softly.
Since then, she has not spoken publicly.
(Staff writers Jay Price, Benjamin Niolet, Eric Ferreri and Janell Ross and news researchers Brooke Cain and Lamara Williams-Hackett contributed to this report.)
What Happened at Duke?
Sex. Race. A raucous party. A rape charge. And a prosecutor up for re-election. Inside the mystery that has roiled a campus and riveted the country.
By Susannah Meadows and Evan Thomas
Newsweek
May 1, 2006 issue - Racial tension, class conflict and allegations of sexual violence are perfect ingredients for a media circus. On eBay last week, you could buy T shirts decorated with a cartoonish "South Park" character, posing as a Duke lacrosse player, crudely taunting the prosecutor: MIKE NIFONG S---- A--. On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh was speculating whether the Rev. Al Sharpton would arrive on the scene to play the Tawana Brawley card after, as Limbaugh put it, "the lacrosse team supposedly, you know, raped some, uh, hos." (Limbaugh later apologized for a "terrible slip of the tongue.") On cable TV, Jon Stewart was making fun of Geraldo Rivera for gravely and fatuously intoning, "It is not always the nuns that get raped. Sometimes it's the strippers that get raped."
Some people may find it funny. Except, of course, the case is no laughing matter to the young woman who suffered injuries that appear to be caused by a sexual assault. And to the family of Reade Seligmann, one of the two players indicted last week, the whole affair must seem like a grotesque nightmare. The 20-year-old Seligmann turned himself in to police at dawn to be handcuffed and charged with first-degree forcible rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. Less than 48 hours later, his lawyer was able to produce evidence that would seem to indicate it was virtually impossible that Seligmann committed the crime. Photos taken by a partygoer and viewed by NEWSWEEK show the alleged victim, an exotic dancer, ending a brief performance for the team at 12:03 a.m. Between 12:05 and 12:24 a.m., Seligmann dialed at least eight separate calls on his cell phone. A taxi driver said that he had picked up Seligmann and another friend, who were laughing and joking, at about 12:19, and took them to an ATM (where Seligmann swiped his card), to a fast-food restaurant and then to his dorm, where Seligmann swiped in at 12:46 a.m. In other words, it would seem Seligmann must have committed a sex crime in less than two minutes or while he was on the phone. Defense lawyers were broadly hinting that the second defendant, Collin Finnerty, had left the party before the dance even began. Both men's lawyers maintain their clients are innocent.
Nifong, the prosecutor, has indicated that he may still charge a third alleged rapist from among the 40-odd players who attended the party. Earlier DNA tests did not implicate any of the 46 members of the team (the one black player was not tested; the alleged victim, who is black, said her attackers were white men). But results from a second round of DNA tests are expected back this week, and defense lawyer Bill Thomas told NEWSWEEK that in the first round some DNA showed up under the woman's fingernails, though tests were inconclusive about identity. When the case first broke in the press, Nifong, a white man who is running for election in a racially mixed county, hinted to NEWSWEEK that blood and urine tests of the woman would reveal the presence of a date-rape drug. It appears from medical records that the woman was sexually abused, though the precise timing is unclear. The woman apparently told Nifong that she is "100 percent" sure of the identity of her assailants. But the aggressive lawyers defending the team were quick to point out that she was identifying them only from photos of the team, not from the usual police lineup including suspects as well as people unconnected to the case.
From the beginning, the case has provided a tawdry real-world blend of true crime, high life and low manners, for the likes of novelists John Grisham and Tom Wolfe. Raunchy rich kids. Town-gown conflict. Raw racial politics. A bedeviling forensic puzzle. But the denouement may be tragic for everyone involved, and the only sure outcome is the iron law of unintended consequences. The story has freakish turns, but it is also the product of a widespread college-age culture that proud parents do not wish to examine too closely: future Masters of the Universe who sometimes behave like thugs.
With its soaring Gothic chapel tower (the gift of a tobacco heir), Duke was the physical model for Dupont University in Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons"—an elite school vying with the Ivies for prestige and the best and brightest students. For decades those students were white and privileged, though in recent years Duke, like its competitors, has become more diverse.
Traditionally, the men's fraternities occupied choice dormitories fronting West Campus. Underage drinking was winked at. The frats held keggers on the lawn not far from the chapel. But beginning in the mid-'90s, the university administration began pushing the partying off campus, in part because of worries about legal liability.
The fun just moved to quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods near East Campus. The frats and athletic teams began renting houses. Neighbors were not thrilled to be awakened at 2 a.m. by loud rock music and drunken students throwing up in their yards. The Durham police, who do not look fondly on wealthy children's behaving like louts, began citing Duke students for minor nuisance crimes, such as holding open beer cans and public urination. In the winter of 2005, police arrived to break up a party of some 200 kids, and found girls in bikinis, inspired by the movie "Old School," wrestling in a tub filled with baby oil. Town-gown tension ratcheted up, so much so that the university recently bought up 12 houses that had been used for student parties, with the intention of selling them to professors and quieter homeowners.
One of those houses, at 610 North Buchanan Boulevard, was rented by three of the four captains of the Duke lacrosse team. Lacrosse players at Duke have generally excellent grades, almost always graduate and often find jobs waiting for them on Wall Street. But they have a reputation for swagger and rowdiness, according to The Chronicle, the student newspaper, which wrote last week, "Players frequently walk around with girls—sometimes called 'lacrosstitutes' by their peers—in tow," and have been known to kick in doors and urinate out windows. History professor Peter Wood, who often has lacrosse players in his course on Native Americans (who invented the game), complained that team members sometimes signed in to class and then walked out, without bothering to sit down.
Strutting lacrosse players are a distinctive and familiar breed on elite campuses along the Eastern Seaboard. Because the game until recently was played mostly at prep schools and in upper-middle-class communities on New York's Long Island and outside Baltimore, the players tend to be at once macho and entitled, a sometimes unfortunate combination. They can often be seen driving in SUVs with LAX decals, their dirty-white college ball caps turned around, a pinch of Skoal in their mouths.
The two players arrested last week fit the rich-kid stereotype, though they were praised by neighbors and teachers as exemplary young men. Seligmann's father works in finance; the family lives in a stately brick Georgian in Essex Fells, N.J., assessed at $1.35 million in 2005. Seligmann, who was recruited by Harvard and Princeton as well as Duke, was described by Essex Fells Mayor Ed Abbot as "in many ways a role model to all the boys." Finnerty's father is a Wall Street financier with a $2 million Dutch colonial next to the Garden City (N.Y.) Golf Club and a $4.3 million summer home in West Hampton Beach, complete with motorboat and tennis court. Finnerty is said to be soft-spoken, a team player, reserved, even passive, though a bit of a wise guy. Last November, he and two high-school teammates were arrested for jumping and punching a pair of recent college grads on a street in Washington, D.C.'s preppy Georgetown, well after midnight. Finnerty and his mates had taunted their victims by calling them "gay." (Finnerty agreed to perform community service to avoid being formally charged. It is unclear if the rape arrest will affect that case.)
The antics of the lacrosse team had attracted the notice of administrators at Duke, both for raucous tailgating parties before football games and a high rate of campus misdemeanors, like public underage drinking (15 of the 47 players on the roster have been cited by police at some point in the last three years). The players on Duke's high-profile basketball team have tutors and minders and must attend study halls. The lacrosse players, like most other athletes at Duke, are by and large left alone. Still, university officials told the Duke lacrosse team's coach, Mike Pressler, that he needed to keep an eye on the off-field activities of his players. On the other hand, Pressler, who took his team to the finals of the national championships last year, was given a three-year contract. (Pressler, who declined to comment, resigned three weeks ago.)
The Duke lacrosse team was off to a good start this spring, ranked No. 2 in the nation, when the players decided to have a special evening on the night of March 13. The captains renting 610 North Buchanan hired a pair of strippers for $400 apiece from a local escort service. According to a Durham police affidavit, the lacrosse players misled the "exotic dancers," saying the party was for just a few track and baseball players. (One Durham escort service told news-week it does not like to provide dancers to student parties because they can get out of hand.) About 40 lacrosse players showed up; a photo taken at around 11 p.m. shows them happily partying.
According to a timeline put out by defense lawyers, one exotic dancer, Kim Roberts, 31, appeared on time, but another dancer, who was dropped off by a car, arrived a half hour late. (The woman is a 27-year-old single mother of two; NEWSWEEK, like most news organizations, does not identify alleged rape victims.) According to Roberts, who was interviewed last week by NEWSWEEK, the boys gave each of them mixed drinks. Roberts says she did not drink hers, but the other dancer did, knocking her cup over after finishing half her drink, then imbibing Roberts's.
Roberts said that she thought the other woman arrived sober. But when the two began their strip show around midnight, the other woman began having trouble. "She started stumbling," recalled Roberts. "When I think back on it, she had a glassy look in her eyes." Roberts says she "gave her a look that said, 'C'mon, girl, what's going on?' "—but got no response. The dance lasted about 10 minutes, according to Roberts; the defense lawyers say it lasted only about three minutes. (The women, who did not know each other, were supposed to put on a roughly two-hour show for the $800.)
All sides agree that one of the partygoers called out to the women asking if they had brought any sex toys. According to defense lawyers, there was some anatomically crude banter between one of the women and the audience, but then one of the boys, holding a broom handle, yelled out, "Use this!" That was enough for Roberts; she and the other woman ended the show. A photo taken at 12:03 shows the dancers turning away; the boys no longer look happy.
According to the defense timeline, the two women went into the bathroom—alone—and locked the door. For about 20 minutes, the defense lawyers say, the boys cajoled and pleaded with the women to come out, at one point slipping money under the door. Finally, the women emerged and went out to Roberts's car. In a photo taken at 12:30, the other woman is standing on the back stoop, carrying what looks like a purse and a makeup bag. She appears to be smiling. At 12:37, she can be seen lying on her side on the stoop; her ankle is bleeding, her elbow is scraped and two drops of blood appear on her thigh. At 12:41, a final photo shows the woman in the front seat of Roberts's car; one of the guys appears to be helping her in.
At some point, a next-door neighbor intermittently watching this scene unfold heard the woman say she forgot her shoe, and saw her walk back toward the house. The neighbor also heard heated words about money, possibly a dispute over pay. He also heard several boys milling around, saying, "Let's go."
The evening ended in recriminations. The defense lawyers say that Roberts mocked the boys' manhood; Roberts says the boys called her a "n-----." The neighbor heard one of the boys yell, "Hey b----, thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt." Roberts called 911 and complained to police that some students at 610 North Buchanan were taunting her and her friend with racial epithets. She told NEWSWEEK that she yelled out at the boys, "I called the cops, you dumbasses."
The transcript of the 911 call makes it sound as though she and the other dancer were just passersby being racially insulted by students. "I was angry and I had to tell somebody," says Roberts. "I didn't want everyone to know I'm a dancer." During her interview with NEWSWEEK, she disputed the defense timeline, but she would not go on the record to be specific about the discrepancies.
At first, Roberts says she did not think the other dancer had been raped. She was mad at the other stripper, who was almost passed out in the car and not talking. Roberts said she had not collected all the money owed them for the dance, and she wondered if the other dancer was somehow hustling her. She drove to a local Kroger supermarket and told the security guard there that she had a woman in her car who could barely move. The police arrived and radioed back to the dispatcher that the woman was "passed-out drunk" but otherwise appeared unharmed.
Police logs show that the woman was taken to the Duke hospital at 2:31 a.m., after a stop at a substance-abuse center, and that she claimed she had been raped. She was examined by a sexual-assault nurse and likely given a battery of blood and urine tests. According to Nifong, a hospital report later showed that her injuries and emotional state were consistent with having been raped. According to a police affidavit, she later claimed she had been held down, beaten, strangled, and raped vaginally, anally and orally. She identified the first names of three men at the lacrosse party, but said the players were using different names at different times (none of the first names in the police affidavit match the first names of the two players indicted last week).
Police also questioned Roberts. It is not clear what she told them, or whether her statement to police matches her later statements to NEWSWEEK and other media outlets. Roberts did say that, within several days of the incident, she went to James D. (Butch) Williams, a prominent local attorney, to ask his advice. She says that from the outset Williams told her that he already represented one of the Duke players. Williams asked if she believed there had been a rape, and Roberts answered no. But when Williams tried to get her to sign an affidavit, she balked. She said she later became livid when she heard that Williams had shared her story with other attorneys. Seeing Williams's face appear on a TV during her interview with NEWSWEEK, she stood up and began punching the air in anger at him. "I feel like he preyed on my naiveté," she told NEWSWEEK. "I don't want someone to play me like I'm stupid."
Roberts says she changed her mind about whether the other woman had been raped. (She is careful to say that her version of events has not changed—just her opinion of what might have happened when the woman was out of her sight.) She was affected by news of the medical report. She had not noticed any swelling in the face of the other woman, but her lawyer told her that facial swelling often takes a couple of hours to show.
Roberts, who dropped out of UNC after she became pregnant and began exotic dancing only last year, may have had other motives to change her conclusion. On April 19, she e-mailed 5W Public Relations in New York, which represents the rapper Lil' Kim (the dancer says she is a huge fan of Lil' Kim's). The e-mail begins, "Hi! My name is Kim and I am involved in the Duke Lacrosse scandal." She goes on, "Although I am no celebrity and just an average citizen, I've found myself at the center of one of the biggest stories in the country. I'm worried about letting this opportunity pass me by without making the best of it and was wondering if you had any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage."
The PR agency released the e-mail to the press. According to the Associated Press, which interviewed Roberts, she "took umbrage at the notion that she should not try to make something out of her experience. She's worried that once her name and criminal record are public, no one will want to hire her. 'Why shouldn't I profit from it?' she asked. 'I didn't ask to be in this position ... I would like to feed my daughter'."
Court records obtained by AP and by NEWSWEEK show that Kim Roberts was on probation from a 2001 conviction for embezzling $25,000 from a photofinishing company where she worked, helping to keep payroll records. On March 22, eight days after the alleged rape, Kim spent two hours in jail for breaking the terms of her probation (she had left the state, her attorney says, to visit her sick father). She posted $25,000 bond and on March 30 found a lawyer, Mark Simeon.
Simeon is not a big-time lawyer. He handles mostly traffic violations and routine criminal matters in the Durham courts. But he is politically active—in 2002 he ran for district attorney and lost. He sees Roberts's case as an opportunity for him, too. "I will be there for her if and when she decides to pursue legal remedies on her own behalf," he says. And he wants to put together a team to represent the alleged rape victim in another civil suit, in order to, he says, "help make her whole." He has asked an associate to contact Willie E. Gary, a well-known Florida lawyer. Simeon told NEWSWEEK, "[My mother's] proud of seeing me on TV but she'd like to see that translated into something tangible. It's not so I can dress like a powerful lawyer. I've struggled since that last election."
Simeon has a relationship with prosecutor Nifong that may shed light on the D.A.'s handling of the case. Nifong was the protégé of Simeon's rival in the 2002 race for D.A. Simeon and Nifong did not get along, according to Simeon. But last year, Nifong's boss, Jim Hardin, was appointed to a judgeship, and Nifong was appointed to fill his place. Nifong's term is almost up, and in Durham, district attorney is an elected post. The voters go to the polls in one week, on May 2. One of Nifong's opponents is a lawyer named Freda Black, who was passed over for the D.A. job. Black is—or was, until the Duke case—better known around town than Nifong, largely because she won a conviction in a celebrated murder case. Nifong's other opponent is a lawyer with no prosecutorial experience named Keith Bishop. Nifong and Black are white; Bishop is African-American. Durham voters are about 40 percent black, so Nifong almost surely needs to win black votes to keep his job.
Shortly after Nifong decided to run, he began reaching out to Simeon. He went to an NAACP banquet and crossed the room to extend his hand in peace to Simeon. On March 28—the day after Nifong first spoke out in the Duke case, publicly chastising the players for not coming forward to volunteer information about the alleged rape—Simeon told Nifong he would support him. He invited Nifong to speak at his church, Ebenezer Missionary Baptist, and introduced him to the African-American congregation as a man who had always been a "good prosecutor," but who, Simeon said he had recently learned, was also a "good man."
That was on April 9. A week later Simeon asked Nifong to go to court to relieve Kim of the obligation of paying the bail-bond fees, arguing that she was no longer a "flight risk." Nifong agreed, as did the judge. Simeon told NEWSWEEK he went before the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, a very influential group, and urged them to vote for Nifong. Simeon says he has also been giving Nifong fashion advice, telling him to lose the plaid shirts and to start wearing black suits, light shirts and power ties. Women like power, Simeon says he told Nifong.
After giving about 70 interviews when the case first broke in the press a month ago, Nifong is no longer saying much to reporters. Nor, it appears, is he doing much talking to lawyers for the defense. On April 13, Nifong met with three defense lawyers, Bill Thomas, Butch Williams and Wade Smith. According to Williams, when the lawyers got into exculpatory evidence, like the photos, Nifong essentially cut them off, saying that he knew much more about the case than they would ever know, and that he intended to indict two players.
On April 18, when the two players were arrested and charged with rape and kidnapping and more vaguely defined sexual offenses, Seligmann's lawyer, Kirk Osborn, went to Nifong's office to try to speak to him. "I thought, 'Surely he'll talk to me'," said Osborn, who has known Nifong for 25 years. But after Osborn had waited for 20 minutes, Nifong's assistant emerged with a message, according to Osborn: "Mr. Nifong says that he saw you on TV declaring your client totally innocent, so what is there to talk about?"
Nifong did not respond to NEWSWEEK's requests for comment. Durham lawyers interviewed by NEWSWEEK describe him as an experienced prosecutor who has tried more than 300 felony cases, including rape and murder. He is usually well prepared, not flashy, and he was regarded as forthcoming by defense lawyers. "There were no surprises with Mike," says Brian Aus, who has known Nifong for 21 years and tried murder cases against him.
Some lawyers wonder if Nifong did not get in a little over his head when the TV trucks began arriving in Durham. "There's some feeling that he jumped out too far and too fast with his public exposure about the case and his involvement," said Irving Joyner, a law professor at North Carolina Central University (where the alleged rape victim is enrolled). "He was vouching for how strong the case was, and he was obviously wounded when the DNA tests came back."
At the time, Nifong appeared defensive and made remarks that seemed outrageous to defense lawyers, like his suggestion "I would not be surprised if condoms were used." Nifong is up against a formidable defense team, a network of a dozen or so lawyers representing the lacrosse players. The families of the players can afford top legal talent, and the lawyers have moved quickly and shrewdly in the inevitable media wars. The latest example is a flap over the accuser's photo identifications.
Last week someone leaked a 15-page prosecutor's report detailing the way the accuser had identified her alleged assailants. She had been shown a PowerPoint presentation of the photos of 46 team members. According to numerous news accounts, the report says the woman was 100 percent certain that Reade Seligmann forced her to perform oral sex on him and that she was equally certain that Collin Finnerty raped and sodomized her. She was reported to be 90 percent certain that a third man, not named, was also involved in some unspecified way. (A source familiar with the prosecution's case told NEWSWEEK that the woman broke down and cried when she identified one of the two players indicted last week.)
The defense lawyers immediately seized on the fact that the prosecutor's lineup procedure was unorthodox, and argued that they would move to get it thrown out of court. Normally, rape victims choose from a lineup of a large number of photos, with the suspect mixed in with people known to be uninvolved. With no other option than lacrosse players, the lawyers are arguing, the alleged victim had no choice but to pick two or three of the players, or appear uncertain.
The intricate legal dance—and the media jamboree—is likely to drag on. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has predictably entered the fray, offering to pray with the victim and pay her college tuition. On the Internet, sports-equipment producers are reporting a sudden surge in sales of Duke lacrosse jerseys. At the university, some soul searching is underway. At a "Conversation on Campus Culture" inside the cavernous chapel, a Duke administrator, reading from a student blog, asked whether Duke is intentionally or unintentionally promoting "a culture of crassness at the expense of a culture of character." But attendance seemed sparse, with maybe 250 people present, relatively few of them students. "The median age of the audience as I look out is older than I'd hoped it would be," said Duke's president, Richard Brodhead. It is hard to know just how deep the culture of crassness runs at Duke, but one wonders after reading an e-mail sent from one of the lacrosse players' address an hour or so after the party. The author of the e-mail told his buddies he wanted to hire some strippers and skin them and kill them while he ejaculated in his "Duke-issue spandex." The e-mail was said by team members to be a joking reference to the movie "American Psycho."
Across town, at NCCU, the mostly black college where the alleged victim is enrolled, students seemed bitterly resigned to the players' beating the rap. "This is a race issue," said Candice Shaw, 20. "People at Duke have a lot of money on their side." Chan Hall, 22, said, "It's the same old story. Duke up, Central down." Hall said he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted "whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past." (On a bulletin board in the student lounge was a long list of students with grades high enough to qualify for the Golden Key International Honour Society. On the list was the name of the alleged rape victim.)
At the Church of Apostolic Revival International, Bishop John Bennett worried about civil unrest "if people don't think the victim is treated fairly." He gestured outside his East Durham church to the hardscrabble neighborhood outside. "This area is the area they need to be praying about." As town and gown collide, this much is certain: amid the confusion, there is plenty of cause for prayer, from the fringes of Durham to the heart of Duke.
With Andrew Murr and Daren Briscoe in Durham, and Arian Campo-Flores, Andrew Romano and Steve Tuttle
According to some reports I’ve read, Jesse Jackson and his organization, (here is an essay by Jesse Jackson (http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/commentary.cfm?ArticleID=4990)) Rainbow Coalition/PUSH or whatever, is offering to pay tuition for the stripper who alleged she was raped by members Duke University’s lacrosse team (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/16/duke.jackson.ap/). Jesse can always be depended on to fuck shit up, but this is kind of above and beyond just fucking up. Jesse’s trying to play Captain Save-a-Ho, and that’s not going to work out so well. Where was this scholarship BEFORE old girl was on the pole? That would have been the time to offer her a merit award or a grant of some sort. Paying tuition, regardless of how this turns out, sends a bad message: that victimhood, in and of itself, real or alleged, is the way to a come-up on payday. What about all the rest of the skrippers? They need tuition too. Is the Rainbow PUSH Coalition gonna start a Keep Our Daughters Off The Pole Fund? Like money is the only reason women strip. C’mon.
The Black journo illumanati are busy trying to hang the white boys and find a way to blame stripper culture on hip-hop instead of asking the important questions, like why stripping has become a viable vocation in the first place. Here’s a hint: it’s got nothing to do with hip-hop. Daddy: if your daughter becomes a stripper, you lost. Failed as a father and dominant influence in your daughter’s life. You did not give her enough attention. Ladies: young girls learn the power of their bodies from their primary role model: their mothers. You.
That sounds awful to say, but it’s not hip-hop’s, the black man’s or Nipsey Russell’s fault if your daughter is a stripper. Before you dismiss that, really, REALLY think about it. Single moms bouncing from this cat to that cat, finagling bread from this one and that one. That’s not every single mom, but there are a lot of hoodrat baby-mama’s out there, and some of their daughters grow up to be strippers. Now, you say you can’t be you’re your lil girl 24/7, so you stick her in front of the tube and want to blame Jay-Z or Snoop Dogg for turning her out. You think it’s cute when your 4 year-old daughter can pop her butt like Beyonce’? Think again. If BET or MTV has more influence over your daughter than you do, you should put her up for adoption. Square Biz.
The number one reason a lot of women start stripping is because their self-esteem is so low, they don’t feel like they have anything else to offer the world. They have been taught from an early age to use their body to solicit attention and the favor of men. Instead of using looks as just another asset, it becomes the primary currency. Some are either too lazy or too shackled to their own esteem issues to pursue anything else. A small minority have always dreamed of having men stick dollar bills in the crack of their ass. Only about a third of the sisters you see up there are paying for tuition, and probably less than half of them graduate. None have any idea that they are now stained for life. Any man taking a stripper off the pole is gonna find himself getting tricked-out, one way or the next. Because there is a whole pathology that goes with stripping: a disconnect from honor, dignity and shame. Smart chicks get in, get paid, and get out. Some linger too long, and go under.
Some of you all were mad at the izza (yo nigga) for suggesting that skrippers are something less than virtuous. In the meantime, turns out that the other skripper in the Duke case called a PR firm trying to figure out how to maximize this for her own gain (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192628,00.html). Now, that is some sheisty stripper-type shit. Like, forget the fact that my girl may have gotten raped, it’s time to get paid. She’s quoted as saying that this episode may make her unable to work, and she has figure out the angles to feed her daughter.
Right.
One of the biggest misnomers going is that strippers and call girls have no other options. Dude—what about trying to manage the dollar store or the Lane Bryant at the mall? Why not try to score up on some scholarships and grants by getting good grades? You not afraid to get a car loan for that '89 Hyundai---loan up on some school money. Why not get a job working on-campus? How is it that other moms manage to feed their kids and keep their clothes on? Gimme a break. Now, to be sure, retail, customer service or office work is not as glamorous as having old white men stick dollar bills in your asscrack, but those gigs might afford a little more dignity and self-respect. And working at WalMArt, it seems unlikely that someone will squirt skeet on you as you walk by thier table.
Yeah, I stripped. Hood bacherlorette parties and shit. That low-end macking was bad look, and I gratefully got smart and copped out of that game. Besides, when big fat women get drunk and run out of paper money, they start throwing coins at your privates for sport. And that hurts. Or, so I’m told.
For female strippers, that life is hard. It takes a lot out of them. Many of those chicks lose themselves on the pole, and no amount of education or church can redeem them. Once you get up on the pole, it has a way of following you for the rest of your life, one way or another. Like it or not, we are defined in life by the choices we make, and how we live through them. And there are other choices in life besides being a stripper. I’m sympathetic, but I reject wholesale the spin that this is a poor college student just trying to make a living and support her kids. That’s a romantic notion, but it’s bullshit.
I thought I put ya'll up in the game, but by popular demand, let me breakdown a little more Skrippology.
Skrippology
Ok.
DISCLAIMER:
Some of the language used and situations outlined may offend those with genteel sensibilities. I doubt I am busting any atoms here, though.
Onward.
Truth to tell, unless they are working at a platinum club, club stripper don’t make a ton of money. And there are only a few ways to make big, big money working at platinum joints. Outcall strippers do pretty well—way better than the girls in the club (unless the girl prostitutes for the club, which rarely is the case). Why? Simple economics.
Strippers rent the stage—this is called “payout”. Women rent the stage to see how much men will pay them to dance seductively, show a little affection and take their clothes off. Clubs make money off the door and inflated drink prices. Before a stripper makes any money, she has to make payout. Now, at your neighborhood shake joint where the women have moustaches, waist-length breast and topographical maps to StretchTown on their tummies, the payout is not gonna be much. ‘Bout 100, 150 dollars, if that. Closer to 75. Hell, they should pay you to look at that stuff. But if the club has running water and lights, then the payout is gonna be pretty high. Like 200. Two fifty. Sometimes that’s per day, sometimes that’s per week, depending on the market you live in. Platinum clubs charge much, much more for stage time. Now, club strippers get in a trick bag where they make payout, but not a whole lot more than that. What are they to do? Well, there are lap-dances, bar-top conversation and, of course, the Champagne Room.
But first there is you--Trick Daddy—and you’re freshly-cashed paycheck. You enter and every girl in the place looks at you, what you are wearing and instantly figures the angles on how to break you for your knot. A good stripper can look at you and know to the dollar how much money is in your pocket. Square Biz, homie. Don't come blinged-up, cause you might be pawning that on some pussy. These chicks--the pros-- DO NOT PLAY. Smart dudes chuckle to themselves while they sit at the bar, work on their manuscript and let the tricks pay those ladies to take their clothes off. Or so I’ve heard. I guess, having been a talent, it’s hard for me to look at the client of a service like this objectively. I don’t mean any harm to anyone’s person.
So.
Lap-dances are cheap, but let’s get back to that. Bar-top conversation is when you are sitting at the bar, sucking on a Pabst, and the strippers walks up to you like she’s your long-lost girlfriend, sits next to you and starts spittin’ game, and then casually asks you to buy her a drink. Well, as it turns out, it ends up being 20, 30, or 40 dollar drink. About half of that goes to payout, other half to the bar. She pays a lot of her pay-out with this maneuver. So she asks you if you want a lapdance. Ten dollars, all day. So this only lasts for about a song, and you can’t touch her in most states. But she can touch you and does—in a thoroughly illegal manner—and grabs your Johnson by either reaching between her legs or reaching around her back, out of view of vice cops or Action News spy cameras. This is known as the Lefty, The Handey, or more commonly the “Reach Around”. Less often, she will pull your member from out of your pants and stimulate it. To be sure, there are variations. But the thing is to get you excited, as in hard and horny. Now that you could pitch a tent, next thing you know, there is an invitation to the Champagne Room.
Here is where you have to pay attention.
You know your girlfriend, the stripper, homie? I know you love her, and I know she tells you that it’s just dancing. But a lot of chicks are barely making payout. Chicks can make good money taking thier clothes off, but the economy being what it is, it’s easy to plateau. If your girl strips and does private shows, I don’t care what she tells you: it goes down in the Champagne Room. The only reason there is a Champagne Room is to break off a trick for between 50 and 200 dollars (glass or bottle of “sparkling wine”, sometimes you can buy a steak(ums)dinner for 40 dollars) just to get in the room for you and her to negotiate on how much money it will take for her to get to know your wiener a little better. That’s it. There is no cogent conversation on world politics jumping off in the Champagne Room (aka the VIP, Boo-Boom Room, or Peep Show Stall). CNN isn't streaming on the TV set in there. Why do you think there are wet-wipes in there, man? For the wing sauce? C’mon. So, you came in the club with about 600 dollars, but now you leaving on your way to the Arab check loan spot, because you can’t feed a parking meter with what them girls left in your pockets. Congratulations, player. You’re the king of the bar.
Now occasionally, club strippers can't make pay-out. For weeks at a time. Some bars will fire the chick or give her a chance to do some out calls (aka escorts,et al)---which have a guaranteed take and will enable you to do like, 4 of them and come out crazy-fat in the pockets. The percentage taken is usually very small. Lucky her, right?. Now, on outcalls. Smart girls—like 60 percent—are not turning tricks. Because the base money for the call is really good enough. And there is a high likelihood that chicks turning tricks will get pinched. But for just stripping, like two hundred clams for an hour’s work? That’s average, and that's not bad. There are all kinds of things strippers do to tack on to the price that don’t involve turning a trick (sex toy shows, lingierie shows, etc). Greedy chicks? Well, they turn tricks. They are breaking dudes off for 6, 7, 8 hundred dollar twirls. Nomatter what, Professional Girls go on out calls with A Car, which includes a dude, his stopwatch, and probably a baseball bat, pepper-spray, black-jack and/or a pistol to whoop down a trick if he has to. Smart out-call strippers DO NOT DRIVE THEMSELVES TO JOBS. This is crazy, crazy dangerous. If you are dolo and a girl drives up to your door alone--dude--she is strapped and you may be about to be robbed. With two girls come and you are dolo, you are taking your life in your hands. Smart out-call girls also don’t accept drinks from tricks, as these drinks are often laced with date-rape drugs. As in, more times than not. Smart out-call girls don’t do college parties or bachelor parties without security. Two Cars, minimum. Never, ever. NEVER, EVER. Some of these speakeasy joints have out-call services. Those chicks are hoodrats, and often underage. They cut corners to maximize profits. And when you call them, you may be about to get robbed, extorted or arrested. Also: CHECK THE NECK, homie. Don't get caught getting a handy from Andy. The new lick is hood agencies employing transvestites, taking pictures of you in the moment, and then extorting you for money. That's pretty inventive, I must say. Republican White House can really make people resourceful, huh?
What I think happened in the Duke rape case:
There are reports that the white boys offered both girls a drink (ALERT ALERT DANGER DANGER) and one girl didn’t drink it (Kim Roberts, the OTHER one). The alleged victim began to behave irrationally AFTER she had the drink, say reports. So. I think someone slipped the alleged victim a Mickey and sexually assaulted her. I think the boys had planned this assault, and were condomed up. I think she was too doped up to accurately identify the assailants. I think she fell on the stairs because she was doped, and this accounts for (some) of her visible injuries. I think witnesses after the fact may have thought she was drunk because she was drugged and behaving strangely, as in, knocked the fuck out.
CRYSTAL BALL: What I think will happen with the Duke rape case
This story will set off a dialog about stripper culture, sexual assault, race and class (aka the New White Privilege™ or the Original Race Card™). I think a good defense attorney will use the alleged victim’s sordid past to create reasonable doubt. He’ll succeed. She's a hoodrat, bouncing from man to man (one of them was illiterate)with a history of doing crazy, stripper-type shit. The boys, marked as “dope-and-grope”-ers, will go on to be captains of industry. One may run for office. The alleged victim will move, change her name and never finish college. The other stripper will use the notoriety to start a career in porn. We’ll all be confused and conflicted because there are no angels in this story.
I think we aren’t knowing how to feel about hood-rats strippers with criminal pasts who allege rape. I think this isn’t a Tawana Brawley case—SOMETHING clearly happened. But sadly, it could very easily be. None of the players in this scenario are particularly credible: Strippers are, after all, professional liars. These white boys, lawyered-up with the best defense money can buy, have been lying since they could talk. After all, you really have to lie to yourself to feel superior to others. The lie you tell yourself is the biggest lie of all. These boys probably feel insulated and entitled to lie to protect themselves. Why do I say this? I know white boys, man. No homo.
The truth? I think we will never know what happened. Because you can’t trust rich white brats. And you can’t trust stripper hoodrats. With a little political backstory to boot. This story is the Perfect Storm.
The case will become Bizzaro O.J.: some white folks will cheer when the boys get off, while much of Black America will standby angry and confused. At some point white America will ask aloud why these good white boys would want to see ghetto black girls naked in the first place, and then it’ll get ugly. Or informative. Or both.
I think we’ll all gonna feel a little dirty before it’s over.
I lifted a really, really thorough piece about the accuser from the News Observer. Also, a good joint from Newsweek. Sorry about the wacky formatting.
NEXT ENTRY: ?
Mother, dancer, accuser
Duke scandal peels back layers of Durham woman's identity
SAMIHA KHANNA, Staff Writer
She is a 27-year-old mother of two who married young, served in the Navy and was once in serious trouble because of an episode of drunken driving and assault that left her with a criminal record. On the campus of N.C. Central University, where she is a full-time student, few people know her.
Today she may be the nation's best-known unnamed person. She is the woman whose report of rape at a Duke lacrosse team party, where she had been hired to dance, has riveted people here in her hometown and far beyond.
The accusation in the early hours of March 14 launched a police investigation. Defense lawyers say they expect the case to go before a grand jury Monday.
Although there are no formal charges, the allegations have prompted a vigorous defense by lawyers for lacrosse team members and have divided the Duke campus and the Durham community over nearly every aspect of the case, including the credibility of the woman who brought the accusation.
Lawyers for the players cite results of court-ordered tests that showed that no DNA from team members was found on the woman. They also cite 911 recordings that describe the woman as passed out and drunk. They say her condition at the time would affect her ability to identify the men she says attacked her.
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong and police insisted early on that they had evidence of a crime, including a medical exam reporting injuries consistent with sexual assault. Nifong says he believes the woman, whose account is the heart of the evidence revealed so far.
Adding further divisiveness is that the woman is black, and she has accused three white men. That has drawn race, class and privilege into the debate.
The woman has given just one interview, speaking to a News & Observer reporter March 24. Since then, The N&O has spoken to former classmates and neighbors, friends and family members, and has examined several official documents where her name appears.
'She was quiet'
The petite, soft-spoken woman is described by friends as a caring mother and a hard worker. According to people who have talked with her about her studies at NCCU, she also is a serious student who recently received an A in a difficult course.
The youngest of three children raised in a working-class Durham neighborhood, she graduated from Hillside High School in 1996, according to her family. A school yearbook photo from her senior year shows a girl with chin-length black braids and dark brown eyes. Her lips are pursed in a shy smile.
The News & Observer is not naming her or her family members because it is the paper's policy not to identify people listed as victims of sexual assault on police reports.
"She usually kept to herself," said Frederica Thomas, 27, a classmate from Hillside. "She was quiet. ... When I saw her, she was usually with her sister." The sister, who is a year older, is described by former neighbors and family members as a smart overachiever.
The older sister attended NCCU, and her younger sister had plans to follow in her path after high school, according to family members and neighbors.
Those plans were delayed when she met a man 14 years her senior. The man, who became her husband (they later divorced), said in an interview the woman's parents didn't approve of the relationship. Neighbors say the parents expected their daughter to go to college.
With aspirations to travel the world, the former husband said, she signed up in the fall of 1996 for an eight-year enlistment -- two years of active duty followed by six years in the reserves. She began active duty in the summer of 1997 and was sent to school in Dam Neck, Va., near Virginia Beach, to train for her job operating radios and navigation equipment.
That fall, the couple got married in Virginia Beach. The union would allow the woman's husband to travel wherever the woman was stationed, he said.
The former husband said he was illiterate when he married the then-19-year-old woman. She taught him to read, he said, and was kind and patient during the process. After months of tutoring and many evenings spent paging through beginning-level books, he said, he was finally able to fill out his own job applications.
"She never downed me for that," he said. "She loved me for who I was." He said he saw her after the accusations of rape were reported and she appeared distressed.
As newlyweds, the couple moved to Concord, Calif., where the woman was assigned to the USS Mount Hood, an ammunition ship. She was often away at sea for days or weeks, and tensions flared in the marriage, her former husband said. "She was young," he said.
Along the way, the woman became interested in another sailor, a man who would later father her children, the former husband said. The two separated as the new relationship began, he said. Six months later, she was discharged from the service.
A U.S. Navy spokesman would not release the reason for the discharge, though records indicate it came less than nine months before she had her first child, a boy, named after his father.
Court records show the divorce became final after she gave birth. She continued her relationship with the sailor, and the two had a second child. Soon after, the couple parted ways. In 2003, the children's father was ordered by a Durham court to have a portion of his paycheck, about $400 a month, withheld for child support, court records show. He was also ordered to pay more than $2,700 in public assistance to the children.
Back in Durham, where her parents still live, the woman tried several jobs to support her children, including working in an assembly line for a computer company and various sales jobs, her former husband said.
In trouble with the law
One summer night in 2002, excessive drinking led to charges that the woman stole a car and led officers on a reckless car chase.
The episode started at the Diamond Girls club on Angier Avenue in Durham. According to Larry W. Jones, the owner of Diamond Girls, the woman appeared at the club that night and "tried out," giving lap dances to a few men.
Jones said the manager at the time did not offer the woman a job because she was "acting funny."
She started dancing for a taxi driver, whom she asked for a ride, according to a report from the Durham County Sheriff's Office. While dancing, she took the keys from the driver's pocket without his knowledge and, minutes later, drove off in his taxi.
The cab driver called 911 and a sheriff's deputy responded and saw the blue 1992 Chevrolet Caprice heading east on Angier Avenue near Page Road. The headlights were off and the woman was driving on the wrong side of the road, according to the deputy's report.
The woman sped up to pass the officer, and he began to chase the taxi, which ran a stop sign and veered across the road, weaving across a grass median, onto the shoulder and back. The car sped from Angier Avenue onto U.S. 70, the report said.
According to the report, the woman drove down the center of the highway, a 55 mph zone, at 70 mph, heading into Raleigh. She kept speeding, drove the wrong way down Brier Creek Parkway and turned into a dead end, where she tried to drive the taxi through a fence.
The sheriff's deputy said he got out of his car and told the woman to turn off the car. She laughed, backed up the car, then drove forward again and nearly hit the deputy, the report said.
The taxi slammed into the deputy's car and kept going, turning back onto Brier Creek Parkway into oncoming traffic, the report said. Another deputy continued to chase her until the taxi got a flat tire. Officers boxed in the car, pulled the woman out and arrested her.
Her blood alcohol level was 0.19, according to court records, more than twice the legal limit to drive in North Carolina.
The woman was charged with driving while impaired, driving with a revoked license, felony speeding to elude arrest, felony assault with a deadly weapon on a government official, and felony larceny of a motor vehicle. Court documents and her criminal and driving records show that her driver's license had been revoked before the incident, but they do not indicate why.
Under a deal with prosecutors, she pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors in the car chase: larceny, speeding to elude arrest, assault on a government official and DWI, according to court records. She was required to serve three consecutive weekends in jail and was placed on two years' probation. She paid restitution and court costs, and completed her probation.
Woody Vann, a Durham lawyer who defended the woman, said recently that when the case went to court in 2003, he was ready to present 10 character witnesses for his client. She struck him as responsible because she admitted wrongdoing in the case, he said.
Facing obstacles
Rebounding from the incident, the woman tried a job at a nursing home, following in the footsteps of her older sister, who had taken on similar work.
In the summer of 2004, she landed a position at a rest home. But the job was short-lived, because part of her employee file was missing. When she didn't receive a paycheck after a few weeks of work, she filed a complaint with the Durham County Sheriff's Office. Her employer told her to submit a criminal record in order to get paid, the report said. No further action was taken by either party to resolve the issue, the report said.
Her criminal record -- the misdemeanors and traffic charges from the 2002 event -- never stood in the way of her getting other jobs, the woman's father said in an interview.
The father said he did not know that she had taken a job with an escort service until after she made the rape allegations. In an earlier interview, the woman said she thought he knew about the job.
The former husband said that when they were married, they fell behind on bills. His former wife, he said, suggested she take a job dancing; she would be nearly nude but would make some quick money. She visited a club but decided she wasn't ready for that kind of work, he said.
He said he worked during the marriage, but not steadily. "I couldn't fault a woman for taking care of her family and trying to pay the bills," he said.
The night of March 13
The March 13 lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. was supposed to net her $400, according to lawyers for the lacrosse players. But the dancing lasted only a few minutes, according to the woman, police and lawyers for the players.
The woman said she and another dancer sent by a second escort service stopped dancing because several men at the party yelled a racial slur. In a court document used to obtain DNA samples from lacrosse team members, the woman said one man in the room threatened to sexually assault her with a broom handle.
Lawyers for the players say the dancing stopped because the woman now making the rape allegations was too impaired to perform. They say they have photos and video showing she was impaired, and they say no sexual assault occurred at the party.
On March 24, when The News & Observer reported that 46 lacrosse players had been ordered to submit DNA, the woman spent the morning inside her parents' home as her two young children explored the yard.
As she stepped off the screened-in porch, a gym bag slung over one shoulder, she was met by a reporter. Upon learning that reports of her allegations had surfaced in the newspaper, she put a hand over her mouth and gasped. Tears welled in her eyes.
She reported the incident, she said, because many men don't believe forcing a woman to have sex is a "big deal." She pulled her 7-year-old son toward her on the sidewalk.
"I'm just trying to get on with my life," she said softly.
Since then, she has not spoken publicly.
(Staff writers Jay Price, Benjamin Niolet, Eric Ferreri and Janell Ross and news researchers Brooke Cain and Lamara Williams-Hackett contributed to this report.)
What Happened at Duke?
Sex. Race. A raucous party. A rape charge. And a prosecutor up for re-election. Inside the mystery that has roiled a campus and riveted the country.
By Susannah Meadows and Evan Thomas
Newsweek
May 1, 2006 issue - Racial tension, class conflict and allegations of sexual violence are perfect ingredients for a media circus. On eBay last week, you could buy T shirts decorated with a cartoonish "South Park" character, posing as a Duke lacrosse player, crudely taunting the prosecutor: MIKE NIFONG S---- A--. On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh was speculating whether the Rev. Al Sharpton would arrive on the scene to play the Tawana Brawley card after, as Limbaugh put it, "the lacrosse team supposedly, you know, raped some, uh, hos." (Limbaugh later apologized for a "terrible slip of the tongue.") On cable TV, Jon Stewart was making fun of Geraldo Rivera for gravely and fatuously intoning, "It is not always the nuns that get raped. Sometimes it's the strippers that get raped."
Some people may find it funny. Except, of course, the case is no laughing matter to the young woman who suffered injuries that appear to be caused by a sexual assault. And to the family of Reade Seligmann, one of the two players indicted last week, the whole affair must seem like a grotesque nightmare. The 20-year-old Seligmann turned himself in to police at dawn to be handcuffed and charged with first-degree forcible rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. Less than 48 hours later, his lawyer was able to produce evidence that would seem to indicate it was virtually impossible that Seligmann committed the crime. Photos taken by a partygoer and viewed by NEWSWEEK show the alleged victim, an exotic dancer, ending a brief performance for the team at 12:03 a.m. Between 12:05 and 12:24 a.m., Seligmann dialed at least eight separate calls on his cell phone. A taxi driver said that he had picked up Seligmann and another friend, who were laughing and joking, at about 12:19, and took them to an ATM (where Seligmann swiped his card), to a fast-food restaurant and then to his dorm, where Seligmann swiped in at 12:46 a.m. In other words, it would seem Seligmann must have committed a sex crime in less than two minutes or while he was on the phone. Defense lawyers were broadly hinting that the second defendant, Collin Finnerty, had left the party before the dance even began. Both men's lawyers maintain their clients are innocent.
Nifong, the prosecutor, has indicated that he may still charge a third alleged rapist from among the 40-odd players who attended the party. Earlier DNA tests did not implicate any of the 46 members of the team (the one black player was not tested; the alleged victim, who is black, said her attackers were white men). But results from a second round of DNA tests are expected back this week, and defense lawyer Bill Thomas told NEWSWEEK that in the first round some DNA showed up under the woman's fingernails, though tests were inconclusive about identity. When the case first broke in the press, Nifong, a white man who is running for election in a racially mixed county, hinted to NEWSWEEK that blood and urine tests of the woman would reveal the presence of a date-rape drug. It appears from medical records that the woman was sexually abused, though the precise timing is unclear. The woman apparently told Nifong that she is "100 percent" sure of the identity of her assailants. But the aggressive lawyers defending the team were quick to point out that she was identifying them only from photos of the team, not from the usual police lineup including suspects as well as people unconnected to the case.
From the beginning, the case has provided a tawdry real-world blend of true crime, high life and low manners, for the likes of novelists John Grisham and Tom Wolfe. Raunchy rich kids. Town-gown conflict. Raw racial politics. A bedeviling forensic puzzle. But the denouement may be tragic for everyone involved, and the only sure outcome is the iron law of unintended consequences. The story has freakish turns, but it is also the product of a widespread college-age culture that proud parents do not wish to examine too closely: future Masters of the Universe who sometimes behave like thugs.
With its soaring Gothic chapel tower (the gift of a tobacco heir), Duke was the physical model for Dupont University in Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons"—an elite school vying with the Ivies for prestige and the best and brightest students. For decades those students were white and privileged, though in recent years Duke, like its competitors, has become more diverse.
Traditionally, the men's fraternities occupied choice dormitories fronting West Campus. Underage drinking was winked at. The frats held keggers on the lawn not far from the chapel. But beginning in the mid-'90s, the university administration began pushing the partying off campus, in part because of worries about legal liability.
The fun just moved to quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods near East Campus. The frats and athletic teams began renting houses. Neighbors were not thrilled to be awakened at 2 a.m. by loud rock music and drunken students throwing up in their yards. The Durham police, who do not look fondly on wealthy children's behaving like louts, began citing Duke students for minor nuisance crimes, such as holding open beer cans and public urination. In the winter of 2005, police arrived to break up a party of some 200 kids, and found girls in bikinis, inspired by the movie "Old School," wrestling in a tub filled with baby oil. Town-gown tension ratcheted up, so much so that the university recently bought up 12 houses that had been used for student parties, with the intention of selling them to professors and quieter homeowners.
One of those houses, at 610 North Buchanan Boulevard, was rented by three of the four captains of the Duke lacrosse team. Lacrosse players at Duke have generally excellent grades, almost always graduate and often find jobs waiting for them on Wall Street. But they have a reputation for swagger and rowdiness, according to The Chronicle, the student newspaper, which wrote last week, "Players frequently walk around with girls—sometimes called 'lacrosstitutes' by their peers—in tow," and have been known to kick in doors and urinate out windows. History professor Peter Wood, who often has lacrosse players in his course on Native Americans (who invented the game), complained that team members sometimes signed in to class and then walked out, without bothering to sit down.
Strutting lacrosse players are a distinctive and familiar breed on elite campuses along the Eastern Seaboard. Because the game until recently was played mostly at prep schools and in upper-middle-class communities on New York's Long Island and outside Baltimore, the players tend to be at once macho and entitled, a sometimes unfortunate combination. They can often be seen driving in SUVs with LAX decals, their dirty-white college ball caps turned around, a pinch of Skoal in their mouths.
The two players arrested last week fit the rich-kid stereotype, though they were praised by neighbors and teachers as exemplary young men. Seligmann's father works in finance; the family lives in a stately brick Georgian in Essex Fells, N.J., assessed at $1.35 million in 2005. Seligmann, who was recruited by Harvard and Princeton as well as Duke, was described by Essex Fells Mayor Ed Abbot as "in many ways a role model to all the boys." Finnerty's father is a Wall Street financier with a $2 million Dutch colonial next to the Garden City (N.Y.) Golf Club and a $4.3 million summer home in West Hampton Beach, complete with motorboat and tennis court. Finnerty is said to be soft-spoken, a team player, reserved, even passive, though a bit of a wise guy. Last November, he and two high-school teammates were arrested for jumping and punching a pair of recent college grads on a street in Washington, D.C.'s preppy Georgetown, well after midnight. Finnerty and his mates had taunted their victims by calling them "gay." (Finnerty agreed to perform community service to avoid being formally charged. It is unclear if the rape arrest will affect that case.)
The antics of the lacrosse team had attracted the notice of administrators at Duke, both for raucous tailgating parties before football games and a high rate of campus misdemeanors, like public underage drinking (15 of the 47 players on the roster have been cited by police at some point in the last three years). The players on Duke's high-profile basketball team have tutors and minders and must attend study halls. The lacrosse players, like most other athletes at Duke, are by and large left alone. Still, university officials told the Duke lacrosse team's coach, Mike Pressler, that he needed to keep an eye on the off-field activities of his players. On the other hand, Pressler, who took his team to the finals of the national championships last year, was given a three-year contract. (Pressler, who declined to comment, resigned three weeks ago.)
The Duke lacrosse team was off to a good start this spring, ranked No. 2 in the nation, when the players decided to have a special evening on the night of March 13. The captains renting 610 North Buchanan hired a pair of strippers for $400 apiece from a local escort service. According to a Durham police affidavit, the lacrosse players misled the "exotic dancers," saying the party was for just a few track and baseball players. (One Durham escort service told news-week it does not like to provide dancers to student parties because they can get out of hand.) About 40 lacrosse players showed up; a photo taken at around 11 p.m. shows them happily partying.
According to a timeline put out by defense lawyers, one exotic dancer, Kim Roberts, 31, appeared on time, but another dancer, who was dropped off by a car, arrived a half hour late. (The woman is a 27-year-old single mother of two; NEWSWEEK, like most news organizations, does not identify alleged rape victims.) According to Roberts, who was interviewed last week by NEWSWEEK, the boys gave each of them mixed drinks. Roberts says she did not drink hers, but the other dancer did, knocking her cup over after finishing half her drink, then imbibing Roberts's.
Roberts said that she thought the other woman arrived sober. But when the two began their strip show around midnight, the other woman began having trouble. "She started stumbling," recalled Roberts. "When I think back on it, she had a glassy look in her eyes." Roberts says she "gave her a look that said, 'C'mon, girl, what's going on?' "—but got no response. The dance lasted about 10 minutes, according to Roberts; the defense lawyers say it lasted only about three minutes. (The women, who did not know each other, were supposed to put on a roughly two-hour show for the $800.)
All sides agree that one of the partygoers called out to the women asking if they had brought any sex toys. According to defense lawyers, there was some anatomically crude banter between one of the women and the audience, but then one of the boys, holding a broom handle, yelled out, "Use this!" That was enough for Roberts; she and the other woman ended the show. A photo taken at 12:03 shows the dancers turning away; the boys no longer look happy.
According to the defense timeline, the two women went into the bathroom—alone—and locked the door. For about 20 minutes, the defense lawyers say, the boys cajoled and pleaded with the women to come out, at one point slipping money under the door. Finally, the women emerged and went out to Roberts's car. In a photo taken at 12:30, the other woman is standing on the back stoop, carrying what looks like a purse and a makeup bag. She appears to be smiling. At 12:37, she can be seen lying on her side on the stoop; her ankle is bleeding, her elbow is scraped and two drops of blood appear on her thigh. At 12:41, a final photo shows the woman in the front seat of Roberts's car; one of the guys appears to be helping her in.
At some point, a next-door neighbor intermittently watching this scene unfold heard the woman say she forgot her shoe, and saw her walk back toward the house. The neighbor also heard heated words about money, possibly a dispute over pay. He also heard several boys milling around, saying, "Let's go."
The evening ended in recriminations. The defense lawyers say that Roberts mocked the boys' manhood; Roberts says the boys called her a "n-----." The neighbor heard one of the boys yell, "Hey b----, thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt." Roberts called 911 and complained to police that some students at 610 North Buchanan were taunting her and her friend with racial epithets. She told NEWSWEEK that she yelled out at the boys, "I called the cops, you dumbasses."
The transcript of the 911 call makes it sound as though she and the other dancer were just passersby being racially insulted by students. "I was angry and I had to tell somebody," says Roberts. "I didn't want everyone to know I'm a dancer." During her interview with NEWSWEEK, she disputed the defense timeline, but she would not go on the record to be specific about the discrepancies.
At first, Roberts says she did not think the other dancer had been raped. She was mad at the other stripper, who was almost passed out in the car and not talking. Roberts said she had not collected all the money owed them for the dance, and she wondered if the other dancer was somehow hustling her. She drove to a local Kroger supermarket and told the security guard there that she had a woman in her car who could barely move. The police arrived and radioed back to the dispatcher that the woman was "passed-out drunk" but otherwise appeared unharmed.
Police logs show that the woman was taken to the Duke hospital at 2:31 a.m., after a stop at a substance-abuse center, and that she claimed she had been raped. She was examined by a sexual-assault nurse and likely given a battery of blood and urine tests. According to Nifong, a hospital report later showed that her injuries and emotional state were consistent with having been raped. According to a police affidavit, she later claimed she had been held down, beaten, strangled, and raped vaginally, anally and orally. She identified the first names of three men at the lacrosse party, but said the players were using different names at different times (none of the first names in the police affidavit match the first names of the two players indicted last week).
Police also questioned Roberts. It is not clear what she told them, or whether her statement to police matches her later statements to NEWSWEEK and other media outlets. Roberts did say that, within several days of the incident, she went to James D. (Butch) Williams, a prominent local attorney, to ask his advice. She says that from the outset Williams told her that he already represented one of the Duke players. Williams asked if she believed there had been a rape, and Roberts answered no. But when Williams tried to get her to sign an affidavit, she balked. She said she later became livid when she heard that Williams had shared her story with other attorneys. Seeing Williams's face appear on a TV during her interview with NEWSWEEK, she stood up and began punching the air in anger at him. "I feel like he preyed on my naiveté," she told NEWSWEEK. "I don't want someone to play me like I'm stupid."
Roberts says she changed her mind about whether the other woman had been raped. (She is careful to say that her version of events has not changed—just her opinion of what might have happened when the woman was out of her sight.) She was affected by news of the medical report. She had not noticed any swelling in the face of the other woman, but her lawyer told her that facial swelling often takes a couple of hours to show.
Roberts, who dropped out of UNC after she became pregnant and began exotic dancing only last year, may have had other motives to change her conclusion. On April 19, she e-mailed 5W Public Relations in New York, which represents the rapper Lil' Kim (the dancer says she is a huge fan of Lil' Kim's). The e-mail begins, "Hi! My name is Kim and I am involved in the Duke Lacrosse scandal." She goes on, "Although I am no celebrity and just an average citizen, I've found myself at the center of one of the biggest stories in the country. I'm worried about letting this opportunity pass me by without making the best of it and was wondering if you had any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage."
The PR agency released the e-mail to the press. According to the Associated Press, which interviewed Roberts, she "took umbrage at the notion that she should not try to make something out of her experience. She's worried that once her name and criminal record are public, no one will want to hire her. 'Why shouldn't I profit from it?' she asked. 'I didn't ask to be in this position ... I would like to feed my daughter'."
Court records obtained by AP and by NEWSWEEK show that Kim Roberts was on probation from a 2001 conviction for embezzling $25,000 from a photofinishing company where she worked, helping to keep payroll records. On March 22, eight days after the alleged rape, Kim spent two hours in jail for breaking the terms of her probation (she had left the state, her attorney says, to visit her sick father). She posted $25,000 bond and on March 30 found a lawyer, Mark Simeon.
Simeon is not a big-time lawyer. He handles mostly traffic violations and routine criminal matters in the Durham courts. But he is politically active—in 2002 he ran for district attorney and lost. He sees Roberts's case as an opportunity for him, too. "I will be there for her if and when she decides to pursue legal remedies on her own behalf," he says. And he wants to put together a team to represent the alleged rape victim in another civil suit, in order to, he says, "help make her whole." He has asked an associate to contact Willie E. Gary, a well-known Florida lawyer. Simeon told NEWSWEEK, "[My mother's] proud of seeing me on TV but she'd like to see that translated into something tangible. It's not so I can dress like a powerful lawyer. I've struggled since that last election."
Simeon has a relationship with prosecutor Nifong that may shed light on the D.A.'s handling of the case. Nifong was the protégé of Simeon's rival in the 2002 race for D.A. Simeon and Nifong did not get along, according to Simeon. But last year, Nifong's boss, Jim Hardin, was appointed to a judgeship, and Nifong was appointed to fill his place. Nifong's term is almost up, and in Durham, district attorney is an elected post. The voters go to the polls in one week, on May 2. One of Nifong's opponents is a lawyer named Freda Black, who was passed over for the D.A. job. Black is—or was, until the Duke case—better known around town than Nifong, largely because she won a conviction in a celebrated murder case. Nifong's other opponent is a lawyer with no prosecutorial experience named Keith Bishop. Nifong and Black are white; Bishop is African-American. Durham voters are about 40 percent black, so Nifong almost surely needs to win black votes to keep his job.
Shortly after Nifong decided to run, he began reaching out to Simeon. He went to an NAACP banquet and crossed the room to extend his hand in peace to Simeon. On March 28—the day after Nifong first spoke out in the Duke case, publicly chastising the players for not coming forward to volunteer information about the alleged rape—Simeon told Nifong he would support him. He invited Nifong to speak at his church, Ebenezer Missionary Baptist, and introduced him to the African-American congregation as a man who had always been a "good prosecutor," but who, Simeon said he had recently learned, was also a "good man."
That was on April 9. A week later Simeon asked Nifong to go to court to relieve Kim of the obligation of paying the bail-bond fees, arguing that she was no longer a "flight risk." Nifong agreed, as did the judge. Simeon told NEWSWEEK he went before the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, a very influential group, and urged them to vote for Nifong. Simeon says he has also been giving Nifong fashion advice, telling him to lose the plaid shirts and to start wearing black suits, light shirts and power ties. Women like power, Simeon says he told Nifong.
After giving about 70 interviews when the case first broke in the press a month ago, Nifong is no longer saying much to reporters. Nor, it appears, is he doing much talking to lawyers for the defense. On April 13, Nifong met with three defense lawyers, Bill Thomas, Butch Williams and Wade Smith. According to Williams, when the lawyers got into exculpatory evidence, like the photos, Nifong essentially cut them off, saying that he knew much more about the case than they would ever know, and that he intended to indict two players.
On April 18, when the two players were arrested and charged with rape and kidnapping and more vaguely defined sexual offenses, Seligmann's lawyer, Kirk Osborn, went to Nifong's office to try to speak to him. "I thought, 'Surely he'll talk to me'," said Osborn, who has known Nifong for 25 years. But after Osborn had waited for 20 minutes, Nifong's assistant emerged with a message, according to Osborn: "Mr. Nifong says that he saw you on TV declaring your client totally innocent, so what is there to talk about?"
Nifong did not respond to NEWSWEEK's requests for comment. Durham lawyers interviewed by NEWSWEEK describe him as an experienced prosecutor who has tried more than 300 felony cases, including rape and murder. He is usually well prepared, not flashy, and he was regarded as forthcoming by defense lawyers. "There were no surprises with Mike," says Brian Aus, who has known Nifong for 21 years and tried murder cases against him.
Some lawyers wonder if Nifong did not get in a little over his head when the TV trucks began arriving in Durham. "There's some feeling that he jumped out too far and too fast with his public exposure about the case and his involvement," said Irving Joyner, a law professor at North Carolina Central University (where the alleged rape victim is enrolled). "He was vouching for how strong the case was, and he was obviously wounded when the DNA tests came back."
At the time, Nifong appeared defensive and made remarks that seemed outrageous to defense lawyers, like his suggestion "I would not be surprised if condoms were used." Nifong is up against a formidable defense team, a network of a dozen or so lawyers representing the lacrosse players. The families of the players can afford top legal talent, and the lawyers have moved quickly and shrewdly in the inevitable media wars. The latest example is a flap over the accuser's photo identifications.
Last week someone leaked a 15-page prosecutor's report detailing the way the accuser had identified her alleged assailants. She had been shown a PowerPoint presentation of the photos of 46 team members. According to numerous news accounts, the report says the woman was 100 percent certain that Reade Seligmann forced her to perform oral sex on him and that she was equally certain that Collin Finnerty raped and sodomized her. She was reported to be 90 percent certain that a third man, not named, was also involved in some unspecified way. (A source familiar with the prosecution's case told NEWSWEEK that the woman broke down and cried when she identified one of the two players indicted last week.)
The defense lawyers immediately seized on the fact that the prosecutor's lineup procedure was unorthodox, and argued that they would move to get it thrown out of court. Normally, rape victims choose from a lineup of a large number of photos, with the suspect mixed in with people known to be uninvolved. With no other option than lacrosse players, the lawyers are arguing, the alleged victim had no choice but to pick two or three of the players, or appear uncertain.
The intricate legal dance—and the media jamboree—is likely to drag on. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has predictably entered the fray, offering to pray with the victim and pay her college tuition. On the Internet, sports-equipment producers are reporting a sudden surge in sales of Duke lacrosse jerseys. At the university, some soul searching is underway. At a "Conversation on Campus Culture" inside the cavernous chapel, a Duke administrator, reading from a student blog, asked whether Duke is intentionally or unintentionally promoting "a culture of crassness at the expense of a culture of character." But attendance seemed sparse, with maybe 250 people present, relatively few of them students. "The median age of the audience as I look out is older than I'd hoped it would be," said Duke's president, Richard Brodhead. It is hard to know just how deep the culture of crassness runs at Duke, but one wonders after reading an e-mail sent from one of the lacrosse players' address an hour or so after the party. The author of the e-mail told his buddies he wanted to hire some strippers and skin them and kill them while he ejaculated in his "Duke-issue spandex." The e-mail was said by team members to be a joking reference to the movie "American Psycho."
Across town, at NCCU, the mostly black college where the alleged victim is enrolled, students seemed bitterly resigned to the players' beating the rap. "This is a race issue," said Candice Shaw, 20. "People at Duke have a lot of money on their side." Chan Hall, 22, said, "It's the same old story. Duke up, Central down." Hall said he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted "whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past." (On a bulletin board in the student lounge was a long list of students with grades high enough to qualify for the Golden Key International Honour Society. On the list was the name of the alleged rape victim.)
At the Church of Apostolic Revival International, Bishop John Bennett worried about civil unrest "if people don't think the victim is treated fairly." He gestured outside his East Durham church to the hardscrabble neighborhood outside. "This area is the area they need to be praying about." As town and gown collide, this much is certain: amid the confusion, there is plenty of cause for prayer, from the fringes of Durham to the heart of Duke.
With Andrew Murr and Daren Briscoe in Durham, and Arian Campo-Flores, Andrew Romano and Steve Tuttle