FoxNews: We Have Made Decision To Name Duke Accuser

Good. Why pretend anymore? There is not the slimmest legal pretext to continue hiding her identity.

I considered doing that myself a while ago. Wrote up a post justifying it. Decided there was no good reason to do so; it really didn't matter what her name was, everyone who wanted to know would know it anyway; and it I was just making controversy for the sake of controversy.

In other words, I chickened out.

But this mentally-unstable, drugged-out "exotic dancer"/part-time hooker moonlighting as a rape-charge fabulist is Crystal Gail Mangum, as anyone who cared to know already did.

Previously Claimed... Boyfriend and two other men abducted her and took her fifteen miles away and raped her. Later filed, but backed away from, charges, supposedly for "fear for her life."

Her father states he does not believe such an incident occurred. Her mother believes her. She went to a psychiatrist and has been on medication.

Full article here.

According to her father, the year after the alleged Creedmoor rape, Mangum saw a psychiatrist and took prescription medication for a year because trauma from the assault had left her suicidal.

...

By 2002, Mangum seems to have given up her dreams of seeing the world. She was back in her hometown, trying to get a job as a stripper. In June 2002, she was arrested on a multitude of charges while working at a topless dance club called Diamond Girls. According to police, she removed a customer's keys to his taxicab while giving him a lap dance, then stole the taxi while he was in the bathroom. Police chased her at speeds up to 70 miles per hour — frequently in the wrong lane — and when an officer tried to approach her, she barely missed running him over, and struck his patrol car instead. She tried to escape again, but a flat tire ended the second leg of her getaway. Finally in custody, she was found to have a blood-alcohol content of 0.19 (the state limit is 0.08). While being questioned, Mangum passed out and was taken to a hospital.

In the end, Mangum had racked up 10 charges, including driving while impaired, driving with a revoked license (her license has been suspended three times), eluding police, reckless driving, failure to heed a siren and lights, assault on an officer and larceny of a motor vehicle. In 2003, she pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors: larceny, speeding to elude arrest, assault on a government official and DWI.
...

Sometime in the last two years, according to her parents, Mangum suffered a mental breakdown and was taken to a hospital in Raleigh. They said they didn't know what caused the breakdown but said she felt burdened by mounting debts.....

In 2006, Mangum was working as a stripper in at least one club and for one service. She was adamant that she never worked as a prostitute, and told police that in only one instance did she have sex with a customer, a man she thought was "nice." According to employees of clubs she worked at, she was known as a problem dancer, frequently clashing with customers and other dancers and often passing out.

...

As time went on, her romantic life didn't get more stable, either. According to reports, Mangum said she'd had sex with at least three men in the days leading up to the Duke lacrosse incident, including her boyfriend and two of the men who drove her to dancing gigs. Somewhere around this time, she again became pregnant. She gave birth to a premature girl in January 2007.

Shep Smith is saying FoxNews also thought hard about identifying her when it becase clear to everyone but Nifong and Amanda Marcotte that she was lying and that the accused were innocent. But they too shied away from doing so.

It's Old: As I say in the comments, I know everyone knew all this, or could find this out with a three-second internet search. What's newsworthy here is not her name, or her photo, or her record -- all that was available for those who looked.

But it was embargoed by news organizations, who stood on ceremony pretending she was entitled to rape-shield sort of protection of her identity. The news here here isn't the news itself.

The news here is the decision to actually report the news.

I'm not criticizing them for that decsion. I made the same decision to stand on ceremony and go along with the legal pretext she was a "rape accuser" in a live rape prosecution.

Just saying, that's all changed now.

posted by Ace at 03:41 PM

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