by Nick Pope
The stripper who falsely claimed that members of the Duke University men’s lacrosse team savagely raped her in 2006 finally admitted Thursday that she made up the allegations.
Crystal Mangum, the exotic dancer behind the allegations, admitted that she “testified falsely” that she was raped by David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann in a Thursday interview with an independent podcast called “Let’s Talk with Kat.” The Duke lacrosse rape hoax gripped the country as news outlets and prominent figures effectively treated the allegations as credible, with the three falsely accused men ultimately going to trial before being declared innocent by the state of North Carolina when the prosecution’s case against them fell apart.
“They trusted me that I wouldn’t betray their trust, and I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” Mangum said during the interview.
“[I] made up a story that wasn’t true,” Mangum said. Mangum, now 46 and in prison for killing her boyfriend, said that she fabricated the allegations because she “wanted validation from people and not from God” during the interview.
When news broke in March 2006 that a black exotic dancer had supposedly been raped by privileged white lacrosse players, protests roiled Duke’s campus in Durham, North Carolina, and many local and national media pundits rushed to judgement by treating Mangum’s allegations as fact. The Duke lacrosse team’s 2006 season was subsequently canceled, and the university essentially terminated then-head coach Mike Pressler.
Racial agitators like Jesse Jackson also seized on the situation as the allegations became a major national news story. Eighty-eight Duke professors also fed the false narrative by signing on to an April 2006 advertisement in a university newspaper that suggested the accused lacrosse players were guilty before they had their day in court.
Evans, who was the team’s captain at the time, made national news upon his indictment in May 2006 when he said that “you have all been told some fantastic lies” in a statement asserting his innocence and that of his teammates. ESPN subsequently produced a 2016 film called “Fantastic Lies” that examined the hoax and all the reasons why it exploded into a national story before the underlying allegations were debunked.
Pressler and the three falsely accused players ultimately sued the university and settled out of court on undisclosed terms. The falsely accused players also sued the city of Durham for civil rights violations related to the municipal police department’s investigative misconduct in the case, which included withholding exculpatory evidence that proved the three accused men did not rape Mangum as alleged.
Mike Nifong, the prosecutor in the case, was ultimately disbarred for his prosecutorial misconduct and spent a day in jail for his actions.
– – –
Nick Pope is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Crystal Mangum” by Let’s Talk with Kat.
