Crystal Gail Mangum

A brief history of my experience with sexual violence

About 21 years ago I was in what I would like to dramatically believe was a tempestuous relationship. Unfortunately, it wasn't that glamorous. I was obsessed with a guy who by the age of 19 was an alcoholic coke and then crackhead. The toxicity of my desire trumped my better judgement and I allowed myself to enter in one of the most unsafe relationships I have ever been. It was also the most formative. This was the same relationship that ended with the abortion I have never regretted.

In one of our alcohol fueled outings, I said "NO", he said "Yes" and what happened next, I believe, is a matter of semantics : I would have probably described it as "me abusó" --he abused me. Sexual assault sounds a degree or two more violent than what happened. And I would never name it rape. I can't.

This was Puerto Rico after all and it was the 1980s, a time when we had an influx of South American dissidents fleeing Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and bringing with them stories of los desaparecidos, "the dissapeared". Some of these people had survived their own disappearances and talked about the systematic rape and torture they endured at the hand of the military during their imprisonment. The others who didn't suffer that fate, fled their countries fearing they would be next.

To make matters more complicated, at least for me, I come from an extended family of alcoholics, drug addicts and gamblers. Some of them were wife or child beaters. Some of them were cops. Some of them were all of the above.

» read more | liza's blog | 2 comments | email this blog | 993 reads

UPDATE : The Smoking Gun publishes Duke Lacrosse accuser's photograph

UPDATE 2:
I have removed Ms. Mangum's image but left the original post.

What I wanted to have with this post was the possibility of her image being associated with a good discussion about this case. I think it is important that when people go searching for her photograph --given it has been released and it's under the public domain-- that her photograph is associated with a good discussion about this case.

This unfortunately is not the post.

UPDATE :
I have been asked to take down the photograph of Ms. Mangum. Believe me, I am not taking lightly at all that The Smoking Gun rushed to reveal her. On the same breath, believe you me when I say I am not taking lightly at all the gross miscarriage of justice involved in this case.

I want to go on record as saying that I do believe Ms. Mangum when she says she was raped. Yet, as the mother of two boys, one of whom could easily pass as a "white boy", I can't even fathom having to hold my son's hand during a trial in which he was wrongly accused of rape.

There are serious issues that have to be discussed about this case : Mike Nifong was a Democratic candidate for District Attorney who needed to be in the graces of the "black vote" to win the primaries and reelection.

It's indecent that many people in the "left" --people who traditionally vote Democrat-- found it politically expedient to decry Reade Seligmann, David Evans, and Collin Finnerty as guilty of rape because, you know, they were three easy "white guy" targets. This particularly goes out to the feminists who rushed to called them rapists.

Now let me reiterate : I believe Ms. Mangum was raped. I do believe the three "privileged white guys" didn't do it. I do believe there is a truth that nobody who was in that house that day wants to reveal.

What terrifies me is that the evidence that could have potentially vindicated Ms. Mangum was probably tainted, mishandled or even not gathered at all because of the political ambition of a corrupt Democrat who saw her as a political expedient pawn for black votes.

To call this case a gross mishandling of justice is to put it mildly.

And yes, I have even more to say about this, but that goes on a separate post.

++++++++++

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. She is the woman who accused Reade Seligmann, David Evans, and Collin Finnerty of raping her at a team party where she had worked as an exotic dancer.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper announced yesterday his office was dropping all charges against the three Duke students and that they were closing the criminal case because there was no credible evidence against, and I quote, "the innocent" trio.

Submitted by liza on 13 April 2007 - 9:55am.
Law | Privacy Shield | Rape | Crystal Gail Mangum

» read more | liza's blog | 32 comments | email this blog | 2780 reads

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Words to live by

These new-found tensions which are present at all stages in the real nature of colonialism have their repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature, for example, there is relative over-production. From being a reply on a minor scale to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism. The intelligentsia, which during the period of repression was essentially a consuming public, now themselves become producers. This literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style; but later on novels, short stories and essays are attempted. It is as if a kind of internal organisation or law of expression existed which wills that poetic expression become less frequent in proportion as the objectives and the methods of the struggle for liberation become more precise. Themes are completely altered; in fact, we find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the occupying power. The colonialists have in former times encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions which find their outlet in expression are in fact assimilated by the occupying power in a cathartic process. To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere. But such a situation can only be transitory. In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal. In the period that follows, the words of command are heard. The crystallisation of the national consciousness will both disrupt literary styles and themes, and also create a completely new public. While at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor, whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.