“Around 9:00 P.M. on Sunday evening March 6, 1983 Cheryl Ann Araujo, a twenty-one-year-old mother of two, walked into Big Dan’s Tavern in New Bedford, Massachutes, to buy cigarettes. She stayed to have a drink or two at the bar and to play the jukebox. Around 10 P.M., as she was leaving, a man grabbed her from behind and threw her down on a pool table. Cheryl Araujo was then stripped from the waist down and over the next two hours, gang-raped by three men, while another five or six bar patrons laughed, taunted the victim, and cheered on her attackers.”
“Initially the city of New Bedford was outraged by the incident. But after newspapers widely reported that the rape suspects were all Portuguese-speaking immigrants from the Azores, a backlast of anti-Portuguese sentiment in the area caused New Bedford reseidents (50 percent Portuguese) to close ranks in support of the accused men”
“Defense lawyers portrayed Cheryl Araujo as a willing participant in group sex rather than a rape victim—a characterization that incensed women’s groups all over the nation.”
“The Accused loses much of its historical specificity by choosing not to engage the unique ethnic, cultural, and class tensions that plagued the economically depressed city of New Bedford in the early 1980s. These factors do not excuse or mitigate a gang rape but they need to be addressed to understand the debased moral and psychological atmosphere of a place like Big Dan’s Tavern.” (Niemi 415-416)
Cheryl’s life ended tragically with a car accident. She was 25 years old when she died. She died December 14, 1986 when she lost control of her vehicle and crashed into a utility pole. Her two daughters were injured, but survived.
AP news quotes Scott Charnas, a lawyer who represented Cheryl Araujo during the Big Dan’s Rape trial, as saying, “She as the bravest person I’ve ever met. I think this was just the last tragic chapter of her life.”
Panoff urged that Ms. Araujo be remembered not for what happened to her, but for serving as an example to other rape victims with her bravery and refusal to stay quiet.
''I once said to her, 'You've been through such a terrible experience and yet you remain so cheerful. How do you do it?'
''She said in a nonchalant way: 'You deal with what life gives you. What am I supposed to do, shut down my life because it happened? It happened and you deal with it.''' (Zuckoff)
Cheryl's Story