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“I’ll Never Forget it”
Toward the end of March 2006, Mike Nifong began a media barrage unheard-of for a prosecutor. In one week, he spent 40 hours giving as many as 70 media interviews and press conferences.In fiery language, Nifong declared that medical evidence made it clear that the alleged victim had been raped by Duke lacrosse players. False.
Fanning the flames of racial and class hatred, he suggested the players’ rampant use of racial slurs during the supposed incident. False.
The players were a “bunch of hooligans” whose “daddies” would buy them expensive lawyers, Nifong said, and the entire team had formed “a stonewall of silence” to protect three rapist teammates. False.
Nifong warned that other team members could be prosecuted for “encouraging or condoning” rape if they didn’t cooperate. He said that DNA tests would identify the suspects and rule out the innocent. But when two separate rounds of DNA tests (including one done at a private lab at his request) came back negative, Nifong ignored the results. He compared the accuser’s claims to multiple cross burnings and a quadruple homicide that had occurred in the area recently.
Coincidentally, the week of March 27, 2006, had been declared Sexual Assault Prevention Week at Duke. Over 750 students and Durhamites took to the campus on March 29 in an annual Take Back the Night rally, a common event at colleges nationwide. Planned for months, the march triggered one of the darkest events yet in this case, as student activists joined with feminists to heighten pressure on the lacrosse team.
Late on the afternoon of March 29, the Duke campus was flooded with wanted posters showing photos of 43 of the team’s 46 white players, coupled with a demand that someone come forward to identify the rapists. Dinushika Mohottige, a senior at Duke, told ESPN she distributed posters because “I’m so outraged by how heinous the crime was. But more than that, it’s the lack of compassion the lacrosse team has shown for the victim.”
As freshman Michael Catalino later recalled, “The day those [posters] appeared was probably the most awkward day of the spring term.”
Tony McDevitt saw his and his teammates’ photos posted on a tree as he was returning from a late-afternoon run. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” he said. “I was thinking, What kind of society is this? I ripped them down.”
A few students supported the lacrosse players. Members of the wrestling team had started wearing lacrosse gear to show their solidarity, and they spent the night of March 29 tearing the posters down. But mostly, McDevitt recalled, in late March and early April, “it felt like we were betrayed by the students. Everyone on campus believed we were guilty, except for people who really knew us.”
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