Eight Years Later, Accusers of Duke Lacrosse Players Still in Denial

You mean it’s been more than eight years already?

Yep, and the Duke lacrosse case remains fascinating for any number of reasons. There was no Rush Limbaugh or George W. Bush to demonize in this skit. No, the usual suspects, including the professional race-grievance fundraising industry, radical college professors and administrators, and the Jurassic media, all aimed their self-righteous ire at a bunch of northeastern students at one of the most liberal universities in the South. Yet liberals wanted the nation to believe that this pseudo-event served as more proof of an ongoing conservative southern white race problem, not to mention a part of the entitlement mentality of big-time college athletes. 

A southern problem? Big time athletes? College lacrosse? Most of these players did not enjoy an athletic scholarship and most hailed from the Mid-Atlantic corridor. 

Moreover, the grievance industry’s hero and heroine were corrupt and inept political-hack prosecutor Mike Nifong and pathological liar/criminal Crystal Gail Mangum–the alleged victim. As the reality of Nifong’s agenda and incompetence, not to mention Mangum’s lack of credibility, sunk in to the public and the justice system–the result was a total shaming of Nifong, Al Sharpton, Wendy Murphy, and other proponents of Mangum’s story–not the young men vilified. Yet, a new book shows that the shameless proponents of the witch hunt won’t let go of the lie.

Eventually, Nifong lost his job and his law license. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper adamantly exonerated the accused lacrosse players while excoriating Nifong and his office. Duke University’s administration and faculty senate were shamed, so much so that it’s reported that the Blue Devils and their insurers may have unloaded some $50 million to the falsely-accused perpetrators and their coach. The actions of Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on behalf of Mangum have been completely discredited. The Durham cops dropped below the level of Keystone cops in the process. And the media, well, their actions have been exposed as scandalously heinous and incompetent.

We now know that ever believing Mangum’s disjointed story required seeing the case through a distorted lens of race, sex, and class. She had started filing false claims of rape and kidnapping as early as age 14. She stole a taxi cab from a lap-dance customer of hers, and attempted to run over a police officer. She was so drunk she missed him and instead totaled his cruiser. She was, at the time of the lacrosse incident, a dancer and a student at North Carolina Central University in police psychology. 

One could deduce that her course work probably informed her that the Durham cops would believe anything as long as an agenda based on race, sex, and class could be plausibly attached to it. Apparently, on that point she was correct. But the house of cards eventually collapsed.

This very week, even as the career of coach Mike Pressler rebounds at Bryant College, and as the city of Durham settled with the three players falsely accused in the case just a day ago (and as Mangum sits in jail for murder), the spin machine grinds back into gear hoping to re-write history. 

There’s a new book out now by William Cohan called The Price of Silence, and it conveniently ignores the known facts of the case and paints the result as one based solely on the ability of the supposedly rich and powerful lacrosse families’ ability to buy good defense attorneys. The author wants to erase actual history in our minds and replace it with the dark fantasy envisioned by the Left as the story first broke. 

The book cannot reverse the state of things as they actually exist, however. These false accusations, and their purveyors, have all been exposed. Duke lacrosse, and Pressler’s Bryant College team, remain alive in the championship tournament. Reginald Daye, Mangum’s boyfriend, remains as dead as ever.