Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Notorious Race/Rape Hoaxer/Fugitive Tawana Brawley, Alias Maryam Muhammad, Alias Tawana Thompson, Alias…Gets Hit with $431,000 Bill for Her Defamation of Steven Pagones: A WEJB/NSU Black History Month Moment

 

Race hoaxer Al Sharpton, l, with his protégé, Tawana Brawley (who has since availed herself of various aliases, including but not limited to Maryam Muhammad and Tawana Thompson), circa 1988. Sharpton has the blood of many victims on his hands, but his bloodlust will never be sated.
 

The Three Stooges: Alton Maddox, l, Al Sharpton, c, and C. Vernon Mason, r, circa 1988
 

Al Sharpton, undated, during the 1980s
 

Tawana Brawley, as she looks today
 

By Nicholas Stix

[See also, at WEJB/NSU: “The Tawana Brawley Hoax.”]


The following passage is from my February, 2001 Middle American News exposé, “Classic Race Hoaxes, from Tawana Brawley to Florida 2000.”

1987: The Tawana Brawley Hoax. Fifteen-year-old Tawana Brawley, a black girl from Wappingers Falls, New York, disappeared for a weekend. When Brawley reappeared, she claimed that “white cops” had kidnapped and gang-raped her.

Brawley was soon joined by a trio of “advisers,” activist attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had her refuse to cooperate with the very authorities seeking to help bring her “attackers” to justice. The Brawley advisors’ perverse combination of strident demands for justice, AND a militant refusal to cooperate with authorities—a position commonly associated with criminals—flummoxed liberal, New York State attorney general Robert Abrams and Gov. Mario Cuomo. The advisors came to be known in some quarters as “The Three Stooges.”

The advisors would invent “rapists” out of thin air, and then charge that anyone alibiing for a “rapist” was himself a “rapist.” When Tawana’s mother, Glenda Brawley, was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, the advisors spirited her away to the sanctuary of a church, as if she were a victim of persecution. Alton Maddox proclaimed that Attorney General Abrams “masturbated” in front of pictures of Brawley, while the Rev. Sharpton linked the Irish Republican Army to the “abduction” and “rape.”

The media slavishly repeated every wild, unsubstantiated charge made by the Brawley advisors, while refusing to pursue compelling evidence that Brawley had fabricated her charges. That evidence included a witness [Joyce Lloray] who had seen Brawley place herself in a garbage bag in the vacant lot where she was found, and the rape technician’s finding, that Brawley showed no physical signs of rape, was faking rape trauma ... and was a terrible actress!

The media also refused to delve into Tawana Brawley’s background, even though her folks more closely resembled a criminal association than a family. Her mother, Glenda, had been convicted of welfare fraud, and her “stepfather” [actually, her mother’s live-in boyfriend], Ralph King, had calmly fired six bullets into the brain of his sleeping, first wife.

The truth: Brawley had partied with her boyfriend, and concocted the hoax to avoid the wrath of her murderous “stepfather,” Ralph King. She had been neither kidnapped nor raped, and had never crossed paths with the dead trooper or Steven Pagones. A grand jury voted to throw out Brawley’s charges, with the abstention of its lone black member. Although a case could easily have been made that Brawley and her mother had obstructed justice [not to mention that the mother, boyfriend, advisors, and Brawley had engaged in wire fraud to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars], and that Tawana had lied to the authorities, neither daughter nor mother was ever charged in the case.

* * *
I hate to be critical of Steven Pagones, whom Brawley and her accomplices put through hell, destroying his career and his marriage, but I think he's making a big mistake by offering to forego the money Brawley owes him, under the condition that she fesses up to her crimes against him. First of all, that she is an unwed mother is a point against, not for her. Second, I would not put it past her to speak in some somrt of weasely, passive-voice language to con Pagones into letting her off, aftyer which she would announce that she never admitted to a thing.

Tawana Brawley is evil. She was an evil racist at the age of 15, and she's never changed.

* * *
Tawana Brawley served with court order to pay man she accused of rape in 1987
Rape-hoax $lap
• By Chuck Bennett
• January 31, 2013, 1:41 a.m., last updated 5:33 a.m.
New York Post
EXCLUSIVE

Infamous hoaxster Tawana Brawley — whose outrageous rape lie 25 years ago inflamed racial tensions nationwide — yesterday was finally slapped with a court order to settle a hefty defamation case against her.

“For at least 25 years, she has been living a major lie,” said former Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones, who was falsely accused of raping Brawley in 1987 and finally tracked her down, thanks to The Post.

“To me, this has always been about responsibility and accountability,’’ added the former ADA, who won the $190,000 defamation lawsuit against Brawley, 40, now a nurse in Virginia, more than a decade ago.

EXPOSED: Tawana Brawley had been living in hiding in Virginia until The Post tracked her down.
At 9 percent interest, that debt, which Brawley never attempted to pay off, now totals $431,492, according to the wage-garnishment papers filed in Virginia’s Surry County Court.

Brawley — whose unbelievable lies made the Rev. Al Sharpton a household name as he bombastically championed her cause — had changed her name and moved down South in the years since she was exposed.

Her fugitive-like antics long thwarted Pagones’ efforts to serve her with the court papers needed to get the financial damages due him.

But The Post finally found Brawley last month, effectively leading Pagones and his lawyer to her.
She was living under the assumed name of Tawana Vacenia Thompson Gutierrez in Hopewell, Va., and working as a licensed nurse at The Laurels of Bon Air, a nursing home in nearby Richmond.
According to Pagones’ lawyer, Garry Bolnick, the single mom’s wages could be docked 10 to 25 percent per paycheck as retribution for her lies.

Pagones said he might waive his entitled windfall — if Brawley finally ’fesses up.

“There is a feeling of unfinished business to it,” he said of the case that ended his career and cost him his marriage. “I look at this as another opportunity for her to tell the truth.

“People criticize me for going after a hardworking single mother trying to support herself and child. My argument has been she has not been held accountable.

“If she is not going to tell the truth, then it is about the money. That is the only way to hold her accountable,” said Pagones, who is now principal owner of a private investigations firm.

But Pagones said he wonders if Sharpton will again try to rush to her aid and bail her out.

“I’ve got to believe since he is primarily responsible for all the damage done, I would think he would come to her aid. That’s what I expect,” Pagones said.

Seemingly a lifetime ago, a 15-year-old Brawley of Wappingers Falls in Dutchess County was found in a trash bag covered in feces with the words “n- - - -r” and “bitch” scrawled upside down on her body and “KKK” carved into her shoe.

Sharpton, still relatively unknown outside New York City, and lawyers Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, immediately took up her cause as she claimed she was attacked by a gang of white men, including Pagones.

When 28-year-old Fishkill Police Officer Harry Crist Jr., committed suicide a week later — likely over a romantic breakup and failing the New York State Police exam — Sharpton and his allies used the incident to accuse Crist of participating in the rape.

When Pagones, a friend of Crist, offered an alibi for his besmirched dead friend, he found himself accused of raping Brawley nearly three dozen times.

After a year of hell, a grand jury found Brawley’s accusations without any merit. She likely fabricated the story because she feared her stepfather’s wrath for staying out late, according to the grand-jury evidence.

“This has been on my mind every time Sharpton has been in the news,” Pagones said of the case.

“I am reminded of the damage Tawana Brawley, Sharpton, Mason and Maddox caused. It’s something I live with all the time.”

In 1997, Pagones won a defamation lawsuit against Sharpton, Brawley and her lawyers.
Maddox was found liable for $97,000, Mason for $188,000, and Sharpton was ordered to pony up $66,000, money that was coughed up by O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran and others.

Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland, Reuven Fenton and Michael Gartland

chuck.bennett@nypost.com

No comments:

Post a Comment