Lacrosse case still an issue at Duke Women's Center
RALEIGH, N.C. -- A year after a woman told police she was raped at a party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team, sexual assault counselors at the university in Durham still hear from students concerned about the accuser.
"It creates a difficult climate," said Donna Lisker, director of Duke University's Women's Center. "In this case the pendulum has swung in favor of the young men, and that may be the truth. It's hard to know."
After accusations surfaced last year that three men raped a stripper hired to perform at the lacrosse team's March 13 party, the Women's Center at Duke experienced a surge in students seeking help dealing with their memories of sexual assault.
Lisker said counselors spoke with 36 sexual assault survivors in the 2005-2006 academic year, a 20 percent increase from previous years.
The center expects to assist an equal number of victims this year, Lisker said, adding that a report that a freshman at Duke was raped at a party in February may also have helped keep activity at the center high. In the city of Durham, 100 rapes were reported to police in 2006, a five-year high. In 2005, 85 were reported and 89 in 2004.
But both Lisker and Durham police spokeswoman Kammie Michael stressed there is no way to know for sure if the attention generated by the Duke lacrosse case led women who might not have otherwise reported an assault to do so.
"It could work both ways," Michael said. "People could be frightened to come forward because they saw all the media coverage."
Advocates for sexual assault victims worry that criticism of accusers can discourage other victims from coming forward, and the criticism of the accuser in the Duke case -- a 28-year-old student at North Carolina Central University -- could not have been more harsh.
Attorneys for the three lacrosse players charged in the case have openly questioned her credibility for months, and a change in her account of the alleged attack led prosecutors to drop rape charges late last year. The three players, one of whom called her account of the party "fantastic lies," are still charged with kidnapping and sexual offense.
"People could not have missed the way that the accuser in the case, in the lacrosse case, was raked over the coals," Lisker said. "If you're a young person who's been sexually assaulted, and you look at that, it's not really an experience that you want to have."
But Scott Berkowitz, president of the Washington-based Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said that because the perception is so widespread in the lacrosse case that the accuser isn't telling the truth, "it probably won't be as damaging."
Berkowitz said if critics' accusations that District Attorney Mike Nifong pursued the case to help his chances of winning election are true, "it's a positive thing that people are seeing prosecuting rape as being politically popular." Berkowitz said he was not defending the actions of the veteran prosecutor, who turned the case over to the state after being charged with ethics violations.
Michael said she hopes victims of sexual assault can see from the actions of authorities in the Duke case that police in Durham "will thoroughly investigate their case." But at Duke, Lisker said at most one or two of the students seeking counseling each year decide to file a criminal complaint -- something she doesn't expect to change anytime soon.
"I think on this campus, at this time, that there is a lot of suspicion about the criminal system on all sides," Lisker said. "I don't think there's a whole lot of trust right now."
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Lacrosse case still an issue at Duke Women's Center
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