Tawana Brawley today. Photo credit: New York Post.
An oddity in the news: Tawana Brawley, the 15-year-old black girl who rocketed to momentary fame in 1987 for making racially charged accusations of rape, has surfaced in the public eye. And she’s living the Richmond area!
Brawley had been laying low, living in Hopewell and working as a nurse at The Laurels of Bon Air in Richmond, reports the New York Post today. Even her co-workers did not equate her with the girl who was found seemingly unconscious, wrapped in a garbage bag and her body smeared with feces near her home in Wappingers Falls, N.Y. more than 25 years ago.
Brawley created a national sensation when she accused six white men of raping her in racially motivated hate crime. Her cause was taken up by the Rev. Al Sharpton and other activists. But a grand jury concluded that she had never been sexually assaulted and may have concocted the entire incident. One of the men she accused or raping her, Steven Pagones, sued her and her advisors for defamation.
Pagones was unable to collect the $431,000 damages owed him until the Post tracked her down living in Virginia. In January Pagones filed in Surry County Circuit Court to garnish her wages, $627 per month, possibly for the rest of her life.
To all appearances, Brawley has been living a normal life, raising a daughter. The newspaper described her as “defiantly unapologetic” but provided no details.
— JAB
