Names such as Tawana Brawley, Maryam Muhammad, Steven Pagones, Alton Maddox, C. Vernon Mason and Henry Crist are unlikely to ring many bells in Barbados or Jamaica.
But to a criminal investigator in New York City, they mean quite a lot. As a young lawyer in the late 1980s he followed an unfolding drama that involved those names and attracted national and international attention.
Twenty-four years later, he isn’t quite sure who or what to believe, except that he is leaning to accept the findings of a special grand jury that looked into the high-profile case.
Hence, when emotions ran high in Jamaica and Barbados after Shanique Myrie levelled explosive charges that she was “finger-raped” by a female immigration officer at Grantley Adams International Airport and Barbados’ Foreign Minister, Senator Maxine McLean, rejected the charges as being “baseless,” the attorney offered a word of caution to both sides.
“I believe Barbadians and Jamaicans should let investigators do their work, carefully and independently,” said the man who requested anonymity because of the position he holds in the city.
“The Tawana Brawley case offers a poignant reminder about how things can go horribly wrong and how passions can be inflamed when we rush to judgement.”
Much like the Myrie story, the Tawana Brawley case made headlines with allegations of sexual assault. While the Jamaican added an anti-Jamaican attitude by Bajans to her charges, Brawley, 15 years old at the time, but now a nurse who changed her name to Maryam Muhammad, injected race by alleging she had been raped repeatedly by white men who then wrote racial slurs on her chest and torso and smeared her clothing with faeces.
The allegations in 1987 ignited a firestorm in Black communities around the country.
While the mainstream United States media raised doubts about the girl’s claims, the Black Press came to her defence.
Many of America’s prominent public figures, including Bill Cosby, the internationally known entertainer, as well as churches and major civil rights institutions, rallied to Tawana’s cause, raising money and otherwise helping the teenager.
The youth’s backers led by attorneys Maddox, Mason and the Rev. Al Sharpton shielded her from scrutiny.
To find out what really happened, State office empanelled a grand jury that looked into the case. It took seven months gathering evidence which included hospital and police records and hearing from 100 witnesses.
In the end, it concluded that the girl’s story was an utter hoax, created to avoid punishment for visiting her boyfriend after her parents had grounded her.
Before the grand jury’s verdict, Crist, a part-time police officer accused of raping Tawana, committed suicide while Pagones, a Duchess County prosecutor who was also accused by Brawley, sued the youth, her attorneys and the Rev. Sharpton in civil court.
When she failed to appear, a New York State Supreme Court judge ordered Brawley to pay Pagones US$185 000 and the others were told to hand over US$345 000 in damages. Much of the money was never paid.
“Tawana appears caught up in her own fiction,” said Justice Barret Hickman at the time.
The key lesson, according to the investigating attorney is that rushing to judgement before a thorough inquiry is completed can come back to haunt everyone.
With charges being flung at Barbados by Jamaican women and men who insisted they were beaten, raped or otherwise mistreated in Barbados, it’s incumbent upon the governments in Bridgetown to have an impartial investigation conducted, sooner rather than later to find out the facts. In the meantime, the temperature should be lowered and we must await the outcome of the investigation.
