Oh man. I heard about this case earlier this week from a coworker, and I was shocked. A freshman college student lured into a dorm bathroom, and then viciously attacked by a gang of men. I was of course even more shocked to hear that, under additional questioning from investigators, she has recanted her story. What will make it right for those four young men who got paraded with their names and pictures in the media? From what I’m reading, there was some sort of group activity, and possibly she was ashamed afterwards? No idea, and I don’t want to speculate.
This does bring back a rather sordid memory of my freshman year at University at Albany. One weekend in my first Fall semester in 1994, a freshman on our Quad reported a vicious attack in her dorm. She stated that she was physically assaulted by a black male in her dorm room on a Sunday night. I don’t remember many of the details of the accusation, because it was 15 years ago. She was supposedly all bruised and beaten up. She claimed she didn’t know her attacker.
After a week of searching for this mystery attacker, police poked some holes in her story, and it turns the whole thing was a hoax. As I heard it, she had returned to campus after a weekend at home, and been dropped off by her father. She and her father had gotten into a verbal fight that turned physical, and her father beat her up. Ashamed (?), she made up a story that she was attacked by this unknown assailant.
Man, what a ruckus. The black student organizations and fraternities were up in arms, and rightly so. I mean, come one. A Caucasian freshman makes up a hoax, and automatically blames that a black man did it? Totally racist and insulting to anyone of color, and anyone with any sense. There was even a campus wide speech in one of the auditoriums by then-campus-president Swygert.