Katelyn Faber: White Tawana Brawley

Katelyn Faber: The White Tawana Brawley by Lloyd Williams On November 28th, 1987, 15 year-old Tawana Brawley, who had been missing for four days, told police that she had been abducted in upstate New York and gang-raped by a half-dozen white law enforcement officers, including Steven Pagones, a District Attorney. Rather than shield the black teenager with the anonymity ordinarily afforded to a victim, the media set the tone for the coverage by reacting rather cynically to the shocking allegations, questioning their veracity almost from the very start. For the next year and a half, Tawana and her team of advisors, including Reverend Al Sharpton and lawyers Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason were treated as if they were the ones on trial. Like ordinary advocates, they repeatedly promised that she would prove her case beyond a reasonable doubt. But in the end, Ms. Brawley's claims were exposed as a hoax, and the defendants were all exonerated. However, the story didn't end there. Tawana Brawley became an albatross around a disgraced Reverend Al's neck and the racially-charged proceedings ruined not only the reputations, but the careers, of both Maddox and Mason, as they were summarily disbarred, even though a lawyer's sworn duty is to represent a client zealously. How different was their behavior from that of Eagle, Colorado prosecutor Mark Hurlbert? He let charges of Class 3 felony sexual assault, filed in July of 2003, stand against Kobe Bryant for over a year, although the D.A. probably knew pretty early during discovery that Katelyn Faber had fabricated her story.Yet, Hurlbert decided to participate in a prolonged character assassination of Kobe, spreading her outrageous lies which could never be substantiated. Meanwhile, because the 19 year-old Faber was white and blonde, 99.9% of the press honored the request to hide her identity and the truth about her mental instability and her sordid sex life. This, despite numerous friends of the accuser stepping forward to contradict the accuser's rape claim. Several spoke of her bragging about the incident at a party three days before Kobe's arrest, including waxing euphoric over the size of his elephantine genitals. Until the embarrassment of his alleged victim's unwillingness to cooperate in the legal lynching finally forced Mark Hurlbert to capitulate, he played the sealed court records card, taking full advantage of his one-sided access to the media. Over past year, the Prosecutor periodically denigrated the defendant in the court of public opinion, always assuring the media circus that a Kobe conviction was a slam dunk. But let us never forget America's lingering racist legacy which imbues white women with all the virtue of the Blessed Virgin, somehow stamping each as pure and above reproach, no matter how many men she may have slept with. By contrast, for hundreds of years in this country, it was not a crime to rape an African-American woman. Hence, black women remain victimized by a culture which unfairly saddles them from birth with the wanton image of the Jezebel. In the interest of belated justice, Katelyn Faber therefore deserves to be shunned in much the same way Tawana Brawley was heaped with scorn over the course of her entire case. And either Mark Hurlbert ought to be censured by the bar or Maddox and Mason should be allowed to resume the practice of law. For he knew, as soon as Katelyn said the condom didn't fit, that he had no choice but to acquit.Attorney Lloyd Williams is a member of the NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars.For photo, visit: http://www.bostonherald.com/bostonherald/photogallery/pulitzer3.htmPlease approach the Boston Herald for permission.