Firstly, I would like to mention here that I have some reservations about the word ‘hoax’ mentioned in the title ‘Tawana Brawley hoax’. It may not be just a hoax and it could actually be a fact. I am going to present the story behind this controversy and you judge it yourself.
It all started in 1987 when Tawana Brawley, who is an African-American woman, accused six white men of abducting her, raping her several times, and keeping her out in woods for many days. Tawana Brawley was 15-years-old at that time. Among the alleged white men, some were policemen. She was found rapped in garbage and was wearing worn, burnt clothes. Her face was smeared with feces and some phrases were scribbled on her body with a charcoal. When the police found her she was conscious but was not responding. The police took her in custody and tried to interview her in order to build a case. She refused to talk to white policemen and requested a black police to interview her. The interview lasted for 20 minutes and during the interview she didn’t utter a word. She responded to the interviewer either by nodding her head or by shrugging her shoulders or by writing on paper. Weeks later, after a thorough investigation, the police released its report in which they negated her allegations of any sexual assault. Later, a grand jury also heard the case. The grand jury listened to all the hearings very carefully. It investigated 250 different exhibits which could be related to the incident. The jury also listened to 180 witnesses, and recorded 6,000 testimonies about the incident, the victim, and the accused persons. The jury then releases its report in which it mentioned that Tawana Brawley has fabricated the story. The jury made this decision on the basis of many facts. According to the report, upon their investigation the jury has found that none of the claims made by the victim is true. The clothes were burnt but there were no burns on the victim’s body. Her shoe had a deep cut but her foot was not injured. By using the sexual assault kit they concluded that she has not been sexually assaulted. The feces with which her face was smeared were of a neighbor’s dog. The words scribbled on her body were written upside down which showed that she might have written them herself. It was also reported that Tawana Brawley was in good health and there were no sings that the victim had been kept in cold winters outside in the woods.
The Tawana Brawley story became a headline of the front-line media companies as the black community called it another discriminative act from the white people against them. Whether it was really a hoax? You judge it!
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