December 26, 2012

Tracking down Tawana Brawley in pursuit of a $429,000 in damages (and interest) for defamation that occurred in 1987.

"In all these years, she’s never told the truth about this hoax or paid me a cent," said Steven Pagones, the former Dutchess County prosecutor who was called a "gang-raping, kidnapping racist."
The case was catapulted onto the national stage by attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, and the then-little-known Rev. Al Sharpton, who claimed she was raped 33 times.
Celebrities weighed in, with Bill Cosby posting a $25,000 reward for information on the case, Don King promised $100,000 for Brawley’s education and boxer Mike Tyson gave her a $30,000 watch to ease her pain.
Brawley has just been located, working as a nurse, under an alias, in Virginia.

38 comments:

Michael said...

He deserves to get every cent. This case was one of the worst racially motivated cases in recent times. A terrible thing was visited on this poor guy.

edutcher said...

So, whay does Rev Al, who is looking none too good these days, still have a job?

PS "under a alias"? Or are you getting all whimsical like me?

john said...

There is no escaping your past. Try to live a normal life, raise your daughter, have a job. Even change your name to put all that behind you. No fucking way.

After 25 years, what's the point in this?

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

That was a little before my time, so I had to look up the case.

What in the ever loving hell is wrong with people?!

Sorun said...

Al Sharpton: Hero of the stupid.

Shouting Thomas said...

After 25 years, what's the point in this?

I'm all for forgiveness, but this woman needs to pay for her sins first. Penance is part of the process.

This purported incident occurred about a half hour from my home.

Tawana Brawley visited immense misery and hatred, not just on Steven Pagones, but on everybody who lives in this region. And, she cost one man his life.

How did she pass the moral and legal disclosure requirements to become a nurse? Would you want her to be your nurse?

KCFleming said...

I don't think the accused man ever got an apology from any one of those liars.

A prison term for that kind of lie would go a long way toward encouraging the others who might copy her, for they still do.

As it stands, there's little downside to creating these Soviet style mythic heroes of the race/class/feminist/socialist struggle.

john said...

The he should go after Al-Sharpton-the-murderer, who still walks the streets, and hasn't changed his name.

Shouting Thomas said...

The he should go after Al-Sharpton-the-murderer, who still walks the streets, and hasn't changed his name.

Sharpton is implicated in several murders and one suicide. It is astonishing that a TV station will employ that bastard.

ricpic said...

As bad as the mythical rapists raped Tawana it still could not compare to the shocking cruel omnipresent racism that stalked Michelle at Princeton.

William said...

I saw the picture. She's fat and ugly and works as an LPN. Her life is its own penance......Her stepfather was a convicted murderer. It's said that she invented this lie to escape punishmet from him. How would you like to spend your teen age years living with a convicted murderer? For all the lies, shams, and hyperbole that surrounded Tawana, hers was the most comprehensible and forgivable. Let her go.

Hagar said...

When last heard from the Rev. Al Sharpton owed about $1.5 million in back taxes to the Feds, NY State, and NY City, none of whom seem to try very hard to collect.

Aridog said...

Brawley is still a con artist. Screw her. Why is she supposed to be left alone and not hectored for her malfeasance? She wons it.

Spike Lee's "Mookie" character in "Do the Right Thing" wants credit for diverting the mob's attention from Vinnie to the store...and yet, he shows up to demand his paycheck from a guy who was just wiped out. Mookie's line of thought, and Spike Lee's as well, is "I did something right...so pay me bitch." You owe it to long dead ancestors....so pay ME.

Brawley is no different than Mookie...except she didn't do any *right thing.*

sakredkow said...

Trying to hold a 40-year old woman accountable for what she did as a 15-year old child?

While I sympathize with Mr. Pagones that seems futile. Is there some reason he didn't try to do this years ago?

Shouting Thomas said...

Trying to hold a 40-year old woman accountable for what she did as a 15-year old child?

I have the very uneasy feeling, phx, that Tawana Brawley (aided by guilty white liberals) has drawn precisely the wrong conclusion about her responsibility in this madness.

She's an LPN now, probably working with the helpless in nursing homes. This doesn't set off some alarms for you?

sakredkow said...

@Shouting Thomas - I figure she was a 15-yo dumb kid manipulated by Mason, Maddox (both lawyers) and Sharpto - people a lot more responsible than she was.

I have no idea where her head is at, none. Don't know if she's remorseful or in denial, or if she even cares.

You think it should raise alarms that someone who was manipulated into making seriously bad choices when she was 15 is now a nurse? I made seriously bad choices at that age, I'm glad it didn't preclude me from helping others or being able to earn a living. Last I head the country had a serious nurses shortage.

fivewheels said...

I imagine the idea behind trying to hold her accountable as an adult for her actions is that you are not an adult, no matter your age, if you can't own up to your actions.

I suspect the money is not the issue, but extracting a too-long-belated confession/apology. Any admission of any kind, rather than the apparent belief that you could do such a thing and simply go on with your life as if nothing had ever happened. Of course, this is the privilege that women who make false rape accusations usually do enjoy. I'm all for pushback against that.

Anonymous said...

On the timeline of notoriety-to-new identity when did she stop returning Bill Cosby's phone calls?

Gahrie said...

I believe Tawana owes Pagones and the American people a public apology and confession. She also owes us testimony on Sharpton's actions at this time.

fivewheels said...

And I never heard that about Tyson. Sadly, it's kind of funny that his line of thinking was, "Oh, you got raped? Sorry, here's a Patek Philippe."

FleetUSA said...

Doesn't the statute of limitations apply? 25 years for slander/libel seems awfully long.

Rusty said...

FleetUSA said...
Doesn't the statute of limitations apply? 25 years for slander/libel seems awfully long.

She owes a debt. She should at least pay something.

sakredkow said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dbp said...

If I understand it correctly, statute of limitations applies when some length of time passes between a crime and being formally accused.

Pagones won a defamation lawsuit against Sharpton, Brawley and her lawyers in 1998.

Judgement has already been rendered. The story indicated that she might have to pay a couple hundred Dollars per month, so it sounds like even bankruptcy can't get her off the hook.


William said...

In a recent issue of The New Yorker there was an article about rape in South Africa. According to the article, fifty percent of the women there claim to have been raped and twenty five percent of the men claim to have participated in a rape. These figures were based on polling. Since people don't ordinarily brag about being raped or being rapists, perhaps the figures given are actually higher.....The writer of the article points out that rapes of women who are apparently lesbian are called "corrective rapes" and are accompanied with a great deal of brutality. The President of the country, Zuma, was credibly accused of rape although he beat the conviction.....This is an example of one of those scandals whose greatest scandal is that it is not a scandal. If black activists and liberals can speak out so forcefully against the Duke and Brawley rapists, why are they so silent about this. One gets the sense that they are not against rape so much as they are against whites.

David said...

"phx said...
Trying to hold a 40-year old woman accountable for what she did as a 15-year old child?"

She's still doing it. She won't apologize. She's not admitting that it was a lie.


traditionalguy said...

She's definitely not a cornball African-American. Her loyalty to her tribe's affirmative action reparations remains strong to this day.NB: This idiocy does not happen in the American south.

Drago said...

If obama had a 3rd, older daughter, she would like like Tawana.....

Drago said...

"look like"

Anonymous said...

Every couple years I check the DOJ's latest numbers for rape and sexual assault split for race and each time I find the same astonishing imbalance. It's hard not to conclude that when it comes to sex crimes, blacks are waging war on whites, while whites conspicuously avoid blacks.

Yet the media goes crazy for the "whites raping blacks" stories that almost never happen, but won't touch the horrifying real numbers of blacks victimizing whites.

There is something very sick here.

(I am surprised there are almost no White/Black sex crimes, but those are the numbers the DOJ has been reporting for years now.)

Year: 2008
Rape/sexual assault victims:
White: 117,640
Black: 46,580

White offender/Black victim: 0*
Black offender/White victim: 19,262

White offender/White victim: 87,977
Black offender/Black victim: 34,842

* 0 means ten or less.
Table 42 - http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus08.pdf

McTriumph said...

I feel sorry for Tawana Brawley for several reasons. First, her parents gave her a fucked up first name. Secondly, how can a 15 years old girl be held responsible for being manipulated by three black professional race hustlers?

Methadras said...

Someone needs to find a way to make Al Sharpton pay and pay big. That fat, bloated greasy assed motherfucker has been pimping his shit on the back of that hoax since the day it started and he floated scott free.

Rabel said...

The NY Post did an awesome job in tracking down Tawana.

Daily News 2007

acm said...

It's disgusting to hunt down Tawana and demand money for things she did at 15. She was an ill raised, abused, manipulated child, and now she's apparently a gainfully employed and law abiding adult. Leave her be and let the race hustlers who used their clout and power (Tawana had none then and doesn't have much now) to ruin lives pay for their own crimes...including the exploitation of a clearly troubled teenage girl.

holdfast said...

Brawley is the least culpable in the matter. She really was a messed up kid who was manipulated by her elders. She really should render a proper apology, but to seem money damages at this point is just pointless.

Sharpton should have been bankrupted and driven from public life - that would have been just and good for race relations.

Aridog said...

The main point is simple: Tawana has never apologized for her part in the scam. She is an adult now, and has never apologized. She now owns the affair as if she'd instigated it.

Like "Mookie" in Spike Lee's cultural story...she still feels entitled to reward no matter what the circumstances...which she knows full well.

Gary Rosen said...

"Sharpton is implicated in several murders and one suicide. It is astonishing that a TV station will employ that bastard."

This.

JAL said...

Sharpton claims that everything he owns was given to him or belongs to some corporation or non-profit.

Even his custom made suits.

Well, that was his excuse years ago that was his excuse for not paying Pagones. Has Pagones collected from him? (Didn't read the article, sorry. Too depressing.)

And yes, it was more complicated than Tawana just claiming to have been raped. It occurred to me that this might be an early example of "jumping the shark" with really horrible results.