I originally published this on my other blog so if you came here from there, sorry, it's a rerun.

Today's discussion; Duke Lacrosse players.

The rape charges against David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann have been dropped although Crystal Gail Mangum still says she was assaulted. Miss Mangum has changed her story more than a few times but I think that some slight inconsistencies can be expected in a sexual assault case. It can't get much worse than rape and I assume your emotions will be all over the place . Let me put it out there, I have never been raped so I don't know exactly how one would feel.
The whole case seemed very rushed by prosecutor Mike Nifong. (turns out he was in a very close election campaign) Very early on he declared this a racially motivated gang rape and called the team hooligans. Hooligans maybe. Over the past few years 15 of the 47 boys on this team have been charged with underage possession of liquor, violating the open container law, noise disturbance and public urination. Frat boy stuff but they broke the law nonetheless. Miss Mangum states she was pulled into a bathroom then beaten, choked and raped by 3 men. Pretty serious stuff this time.
The team asserted that they were all innocent of those heinous acts and voluntarily 46 out of 47 gave up DNA samples. The only one not to was a black player and the accuser said her attackers were white. The accused also offered to take polygraphs. I don't know if they did or not.
When the DNA analysis was complete it was not shared with the defense. They had to get a court order to get the results. Turns out that the Lab director of DNA Securities, Brian Meehan, entered into an agreement with the prosecutor Nifong to withhold the results and not release it. Why the hell not I wondered? I knew then something was fishy. If the results matched he would be shouting it from the rooftops. Turns out that the semen, blood and saliva found on Mangum did not match any of the 46 DNA samples taken from the Duke team.
What upsetting about all of this is that these young men have been publicly accused and dragged through the media. I'm sure it was devastating for them and their families. Will this hang over their heads for life? Will it have a long term effect on what people think of them? Will the black community still think them guilty? I don't know. To me the most upsetting thing is that this woman made false allegations of rape. As I said, I've never experienced that but the trauma has to be huge. I do know that it is made very hard for the rape victim to bring her rapist to justice. She is made to feel that maybe it didn't really happen the way she said it did. She has to relive the event in front of strangers, her character is called into question, she is made to feel like she somehow brought it on herself. Rape is not borne out of passion but out of anger. The victim is in the wrong place at the wrong time or sometimes in her own home. So for all of the women and young girls out there that have been or will be raped, people like this woman just made harder to come forward and prosecute. I don't care what color the victims skin is you should not afraid to prosecute the crime if you can. Did you know that the racial breakdown of rape victims is 81% white, 18% black and 1% other races. You can read more facts about this crime at www.paralumun.com/issuesrapestats.htm