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In 1987, black teenager Tawana Brawley
claimed that six white law enforcement officers abducted
and raped her. Those claims and others that her
attackers had scrawled racial insults on her body and
smeared her with feces were declared a hoax by a grand
jury that also exonerated the man at the center of the
accusations, then-assistant district attorney Steven
Pagones.
Pagones was named as one of the
attackers by Miss Brawley's advisers: Maddox, the Rev.
Al Sharpton and lawyer C. Vernon Mason. While Miss
Brawley refused to speak with authorities or the media,
her advisers were soon making wild claims. Jury
selection was supposed to have started for the Pagones’
defamation lawsuit, seeking more than $150 million from
Miss Brawley’s three advisers when Maddox accused
then-state Attorney General Robert Abrams of
masturbating over photos of Miss Brawley. Sharpton
compared Abrams, a Jew, to Adolf Hitler. All three
linked then-Gov. Mario Cuomo to organized crime and the
Ku Klux Klan.
But the grand jury within a year
announced the story was a hoax and specifically cleared
a Fishkill police officer and Pagones. |
