Al Sharpton’s Long Bill of Goods, From Tawana Brawley to Primetime

Brawley was 15 years old in 1987, when she was found in her hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York, with “Bitch,” “KKK,” and “Nigger” written on her stomach, her jeans burnt in the crotch, feces in her hair, and her tennis shoes sliced open. She said that she had been abducted and raped by a group of white men.A trio of increasingly prominent, and radical, New York City black activists represented her and her family: attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Brawley told them said that a cop had been one of her attackers, and Sharpton named that officer as Harry Crist Jr., a police officer from a nearby town who had committed suicide shortly after Brawley was found. Sharpton also named a local prosecutor, Steven Pagones, as one of the attackers. He offered no proof.Gov. Mario Cuomo dispatched a veteran prosecutor, Jack Ryan, to handle the case. Brawley and her advisers refused to cooperate in any way with Ryan and his team. “That was the decision of the lawyers,” Sharpton says defensively in the Times interview. When asked why Brawley’s team would not meet with New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams, Sharpton said it would be “like asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler.” Sharpton later accused Ryan of kicking a blind man in a scuffle with demonstrators. Ryan was nowhere near the scene.After a six-month investigation a grand jury found that the entire episode had been a hoax, with Brawley having defaced herself to avoid the wrath of her stepfather after staying out late to visit a boyfriend. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/03/al-sharpton-s-long-bill-of-goods-from-tawana-brawley-to-primetime.html