Duke lacrosse scandal: Crystal Mangum admits to false rape allegations

CNN
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More than 18 years after accusing three former Duke University lacrosse players of raping her, a falsified account she shared in graphic detail, Crystal Mangum has admitted she lied about the encounter.

In an interview on a web show published Wednesday, Mangum apologized to the men and said her relationship with God has made her understand why she fabricated the story. Mangum is serving time in prison on a second-degree murder conviction for killing her boyfriend.

The timeline of the North Carolina case begins in 2006, when Mangum said she was trapped inside a bathroom, sexually assaulted and raped by David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann at a team party where she was performing as an exotic dancer. The men were arrested following her allegations.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong. And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me,” Mangum said on Katerena DePasquale’s show, “Let’s Talk with Kat.” “I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”

For more than a year, the school and the lacrosse players were thrust into a media frenzy, subjected to intense public scrutiny and damaging allegations of sexual assault that were ultimately dropped.

After Mangum’s confession, Duke told CNN on Friday it would not comment. The former players did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Here’s how the events unfolded.

• March 13, 2006: Mangum is hired as a dancer for a private party held by members of the Duke men’s lacrosse team. It takes place at a house on North Buchanan Boulevard in Durham. Mangum later accuses several players of raping her during the party early on March 14.

• March 28, 2006: Duke President Richard Brodhead suspends team play for the men’s lacrosse team, a move widely criticized as premature since no formal charges had been made yet. Media attention intensifies, with early reports painting a picture of privileged, White lacrosse players being accused by a Black woman. The case becomes a flashpoint for issues of race, class and privilege, according to the Washington Post.

• March 28-30, 2006: DNA tests on Mangum’s body fail to link any of the lacrosse players to the scene, according to a disciplinary order against prosecutor Mike Nifong by the North Carolina State Bar, but Nifong insists on moving forward with the case. Skepticism about the case begins to mount.

• April 18, 2006: Nifong formally charges Seligmann and Finnerty with rape, according to the disciplinary order. The charges are based largely on Mangum’s testimony, as forensic evidence was either inconclusive or absent.

• May 15, 2006: Nifong formally charges Evans with rape, according to the disciplinary order.

• June 5, 2006: Duke announces the lacrosse team is reinstated to play in the following fall, but public sentiment has already soured.

• December 28, 2006: Nifong is accused of withholding evidence and making misleading statements to the press, leading to an investigation by the state bar, according to the disciplinary order.

• April 11, 2007: Roy Cooper – then the state’s Attorney General and now its governor – announces “there is insufficient evidence to proceed on any of the charges” in a statement shared by Duke Athletics. The charges are dropped.

“We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations,” Cooper said. “Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges.”

• June 16, 2007: Nifong loses his law license following disciplinary hearings about his handling of the case, including accusations of ethical misconduct and withholding evidence. His disbarment is finalized by the state bar in July, according to the disciplinary order.

• June 18, 2007: Duke announces that it has settled with the three lacrosse players, agreeing to pay a confidential settlement.

“It is impossible to fully describe what we, our families and team endured. As we said from day one, we are innocent,” Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann said in a statement. “But it took three hundred and ninety-four days, and the intervention of the North Carolina Attorney General, before our innocence was formally declared.”

• October 5, 2007: The three players file a civil lawsuit against the city of Durham, Nifong and other individuals, according to court documents. Durham later settles the lawsuit in part with a one-time grant of $50,000 to the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission.

• April 3, 2011: Mangum is charged with stabbing her boyfriend, leading to a lengthy criminal trial, and is convicted of second-degree murder in 2013.

Mangum has spent 11 years in prison, which she is getting through by reading the Bible and finding humor in her thoughts, she said in her interview with “Let’s Talk with Kat.”

She wishes she could help children who were sexually abused, she told DePasquale. When asked if she could describe her experience in prison in one word, she says: “Growth.”

Before becoming an exotic dancer, she studied psychology at North Carolina Central University. The transition came from her searching for “validation,” she said in the interview.

“I was looking for love and acceptance from people,” she said. “People to love me, to accept me, to pay attention to me for validation. But you can get all of that in Jesus. He loves us just the way we are. That’s what I learned in prison.

“I hurt my brothers and I hope they can forgive me and I want them to know that I love them and they didn’t deserve that and I hope they can forgive me. I hope they can heal.”

An advocate for victims of sexual assault said rare cases like this might discourage victims from reporting sexual assault and cause people to wrongly doubt them.

“False reports hurt not only the people falsely accused, they hurt every rape victim,” Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, vice president of communications for RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, told CNN. “There are already too many victims who do not report the crime for fear of not being believed. After a false report in such a high-profile case, even more survivors may be reluctant to come forward out of fear that law enforcement will not believe them.”

A study published by Violence Against Women in 2010 found that false sexual assault reports range from between 2 to 10 percent. A majority of sexual assaults, an estimated 63 percent, are never reported to the police, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

Kaleba said she encourages people to consider the nearly half million victims in the US of rape and sexual assault each year who may now face renewed disbelief and question the value of reporting sexual violence.

“Don’t allow infrequent, false reporting to stand in the way of standing with survivors,” Kaleba said.