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“Everyone Was Angry”
Though it was spring break for Duke students, the lacrosse team had played a game in San Diego over the weekend and had returned to campus to practice. By Monday, March 13, they were tired, spent and looking for fun. Team tradition called for a party that week, so some of the seniors had a bright idea: Why not hire exotic dancers as entertainment? When Dan Flannery called Allure Escort Services in Durham, he was told that two women could dance for two hours for $400 each, starting at 11 p.m.Flannery agreed. But for everyone who gathered at the house that night, expecting a frivolous event, things turned sour fast. Crystal Mangum and Kim Roberts showed up late and didn’t begin dancing until midnight—stopping four minutes later. Actually Mangum could barely dance at all; she fell down while trying to take her shoes off. Guys assumed she was drunk or on drugs. The players, some of whom were taking photos, said that for a moment the two women writhed around on the floor, simulating a sex act. Many players found it disgusting.
Some looked away. One looked at his feet. One sent a text message on his phone; another gave a thumbs-down.
Reade Seligmann, seated on the floor, shrank back in distaste. “I didn’t like the tone of the party,” the 20-year-old sophomore and high school all-American said later. Neither did sophomore Collin Finnerty, six-foot-five and freckle-faced, who commented, “It was not appealing at all.”
When Kim Roberts started some sexual banter with the players, one of them made a comment she considered way too crude. Roberts stormed out of the room, followed by Mangum, who was yelling and stumbling. Virtually everyone in the house was now angry. Guys who had shelled out money for the night’s entertainment felt cheated. The party was a bust.
Seligmann and Finnerty left the house. As for Dave Evans, a three-year starter on Duke’s lacrosse team and a former intern for Sen. Elizabeth Dole, he, too, left shortly to walk to another lacrosse house a few yards away.
The women ended up in the bathroom together—some guys feared they were doing drugs—and by 12:15 a.m. or so, they were both outside the house. After going back inside and holing up again in the bathroom together, the dancers left for a second time. Roberts went to her car. Mangum was in the backyard, but suddenly she decided to return to the house once more: She was missing a shoe.
Matt Zash said that Mangum was cursing and pounding hard on the back door. He didn’t let her in. Then some of the guys heard a thump. They saw Mangum sprawled on the stoop, apparently passed out. A player picked her up and helped her to the car. At this point some nasty comments were exchanged, with sexual and racial overtones; one player followed up with the N-word, which Kim Roberts acknowledged provoking. The car took off.
Ninety minutes later, after the police had placed her in a mental health facility because of her bizarre conduct, Mangum began making claims of gang rape. This won her immediate release and treatment as a rape victim.
Mangum also reportedly told others, “I’m going to get paid by the white boys.”
Kim Roberts said the rape charge was “a crock” in a statement to police. When Crystal Mangum was examined by three doctors and five nurses at Duke University Medical Center, not one of them found any physical evidence of rape. No bruises, no bleeding, no tearing. No sweating, no changes in vital signs, no symptoms that were ordinarily associated with the pain Mangum had now begun describing.
One nurse, who saw herself as a rape victims’ advocate, told police she thought Mangum had been raped, noting the woman’s hysterical behavior. As to the absence of physical evidence, the nurse explained away the lack of any lacrosse-player DNA on Crystal Mangum’s person by saying, “Rape is not about passion, but about power.”
Later, she said it was possible no rape had occurred.
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