Price of Silence CONTINUES
why they were attacking her. “I kept asking
them, why are you doing this to me?” she
continued. “Why? And they just kept saying
that, ‘I thought black girls liked it rough.
Thought they liked it like this.’”
She said the man standing in front of her was
David Evans. The other guys were behind her
shoving the broomstick up her anus. She said
Evans forced her to give him oral sex by trying
to put his penis in her mouth, and then he
ejaculated. “I know for a fact that it happened,”
she said. “I’ve been carrying a lot of guilt
because I was drinking and I was flirting. And
I went back in the house. And my memory is
kinda fuzzy. So it’s a possibility that I may have
picked the wrong people.” She said the attack
went on for “15 to 30 minutes” but she was
not sure how or why it stopped. “All I know
is that a door opened, and I was so happy
’cause I thought I was gonna die,” she said.
“All I know is, that door opened. I thought
they were gonna kill me. Yeah, because like
seconds earlier or minutes earlier, they were
nice. I mean, they were sweet. It seemed like
14
they turned into a different person, and I just
couldn’t understand how they changed so fast.
So I’m figuring, if they changed in that manner,
then maybe they’ll try to kill me next. All I
know is they picked me up and put my clothes
back. They picked me up and take me outside
and just dumped me on the porch. They just
threw me outside on the porch and closed the
door. And then, like, one of the guys picked
me up and puts my arm around his neck. And
I kinda felt like he kinda felt bad about what
had happened. And he placed me in the back
of Kim’s car.”
She said she thought Reade Seligmann was the
one who felt guilty and carried her to the car.
What about his alibi? She said she never saw
the evidence of his alibi. “My problem with that
is none of the evidence was actually verified
in court,” she said. “...Anybody can stand on
television and say, ‘I have an alibi.’” She said
she had asked the Attorney General’s Office
for access to the evidence. “I was told all the
evidence was destroyed for my case,” she said.
“I can’t even get access to my own hospital
records.”
She said her life did not turn out as she had
planned. She never expected to be in jail for
supposedly killing her boyfriend. She never
thought she would be reviled for accusing the
three lacrosse players of attacking her. “It’s
very frustrating when you know something
is true but you can’t prove it,” she said. “And
then you have people that hate you, and you
don’t even know why. I have like millions of
people around the country that hate me, and
they’ve never met me. I guess they feel like I’m
a vindictive person. And so that’s their reaction
or retaliation. I guess because my case never
made it to trial [and] that the actual truth
never came out. And the way the media makes
it sound is that I just went to the police station
and said, ‘These guys raped me, get ’em.’ That’s
the way they make it sound. But that’s not the
way it happened. I never even pressed charges.
I went to the hospital for help. I mean, if it
really had been up to me, I probably woulda
just said leave it alone and went on with my
life. I probably woulda kept it to myself. And a
lot of times I wished I had. I used to think that
the judicial system was so straightforward. If
it’s true, it’ll come out and everything will be
SPECTACULAR MAGAZINE | May 2014 | www.spectacularmag.com
fine. Now I have a completely different view. It’s
not even a matter of innocence or guilt. It’s a
matter of who’s more powerful or who has the
most resources or who can persuade public
opinion. And it’s very frustrating. I think that
our system needs to be built on something
stronger than public opinion. And basically
that’s what my case came out to, popular
opinion.” As I got up to leave, Mangum stood
up and put her hand against the Plexiglas. “Get
me outta here,” she said.
Adapted from THE PRICE OF SILENCE: The Duke Lacrosse
Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of
Our Great Universities by William D. Cohan, published
April 8, 2014 by Scribner, a Division of Simon &
Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.”
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William Coham
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The Price of Silence