There used to be a comment here from Igor. It has since been removed, and the posting rules updated accordingly – ed.

The woman that the cab driver saw would have to have been “KIm”, not the accuser. Apparently “Kim” had already made known her intention to call the police.

The cabbie did not mention seeing another woman (i.e the accuser) either in the car or outside it. You’d think she’d already be in the car, on the passenger side, when “Kim” got in the driver’s side, but who knows.

FYI, Kim’s full name is now being reported by major media (ABCNews and MSNBC, for starters), as it seems that she was arrested for allegedly embezzling $25,000 from her employer several weeks after the lax party and has contacted a NY PR firm for advice in “spinning” her story so as to maximize her monetary payoff. Oh, and apparently her bond for her arrest was strangely waived or otherwise nullified, and this “coincidentally” coincided with Seligmann and Finnerty’s arrests. Oh, and now she believes a rape must have taken place. I wonder what sort of deal she and the DA have worked out on her embezzlement charge…? And let’s hope she figures out how to best “spin” the facts for maximum financial gain. Man oh man. And the DA is going ahead with his case…

Tom Wolfe, eat your heart out.

Oh… my.

For what it’s worth, Igor actually linked the accuser’s state arrest record, all of which is public knowledge already—except her name. The redacted comment wasn’t about Kim Roberts.

Finding the accuser’s name doesn’t take any great skill, it seems, just motivation and nothing better to do. It’ll all come out “naturally,” I’m sure, with some sort of “Duke Victim Breaks Silence, Reveals Identity, Discusses Brush with Law” story in the N&O or, at this stage in the game, Newsweek or Time. Those who are posting it elsewhere are intimidating a potentially truthful rape victim, and are deterring genuine rape victims in other cases from seeking justice.

Nifong is both incompetent and fearless. He may have a lot of ethics violations brought up when this mess is over. As Skeptical said…you can’t make this up.

Dan, it will be interesting to see what the fallout of this case will be, and what the consensus of NC practitioners will be re: Nifong after everything’s said and done…...

Chris, you brought up a good point in your previous article about perhaps the other woman was “servicing” some other players at the other house, but what about the accuser? She has admitted that she was an escort who did “one on one” dates previous to the dancing engagement. Now I have to imagine that these one on one visits weren’t just serving cookies and milk, there was probably some other activities that are going on. Now I don’t have any experience with the matter, but I am sure that people who pay for sex aren’t going to be the most considerate lovers and probably were pretty rough. Is it possible that something like this would have set off the SANE nurses? It still is consensual sex, but by no means is it desired. Do you think this will come up, especially if they can find a client who will admit to paying?

Skeptical, the name is everywhere on the net, so of course it doesn’t take much effort to find it. I posted her coviction record, which is PUBLIC. It is funny that the link to open public record is considered “inappropriate”.

Chris, why do you feel that you have to conceal her identity? Are there any laws that apply to blog sites? Or is it your personal belief as well? I would say exposing a fraud that has harmed a lot of people already would be a right thing to do at this point. Why wait for the official signal? :) In other situations it may make some sense to shield her identity, but in this case she is surely lying. At this point it is quite clear. And what harm will be done? It’s not like her reputation may suffer, with her being sex worker and all. I am sure all Durham knows about her by now.

Igor: I have no problem with listing the offenses she was charged with (indeed, I’ve listed them on this very blog), but her name appeared on the link. I think I’ve been reasonably even-handed in not posting the names of suspects in this case until they are publically identified by reputable news sources, and I believe in extending the same courtesy to the alleged victim—who, even if she can’t ID the attackers worth a damn, may well have been sexually assaulted that evening. Even the defense concedes that she may well be a rape victim; they just say that none of the lacrosse players did it.

Personally, I think the norm of not revealing rape victims’ names just helps to perpetuate the stigma associated with being a rape victim, but if you’re looking for someone to lead that revolution, it’s not me. Maybe when I have tenure. :p

Cab driver’s timeline raises questions:

http://www.nbc17.com/news/8896699/detail.html

D’oh; I can’t believe I forgot about the police being there at 12:55ish.

He might have been able to drop Seligmann and Mystery Guy Two off at Edens around 12:44, get back to 610 Buchanan (say around 12:50), and been gone before 12:55, which in my book is “around 1 a.m.”

Still I’m not sure how everyone clears out of there in 2 minutes between the 911 call and the cops showing up. Maybe the time in the police dispatch log is off a few minutes? It has always seemed odd that the cops would have been at the house within 2 minutes of a 911 call for something that frankly didn’t sound much like a real emergency.

Chris – IIRC the reason the police arrived at 610 Buchanan so quickly was that they were patroling the area at the time of the 911 call. I believe the police had recently stepped up patroling the area due to previous calls/complaints concerning off-campus housing.

Are we ever getting tired of this: The reason we don’t reveal the womans name in a rape case is because it is the law. The law must have had in mind two character traits of humans when they made the law. The first of which is there is a strong thread of mob mentality in our humanity revealed in such events such as the Spanish Inquisiton, the Salem Witch Hunts and the lynching of Blacks in America, to name just a few. Our desire to see the accuser is a morbid curosity, if not a secret desire to punish her further. The accuser will strongly be aware of our macabe character trait. Although she may or may not have been attacked by three men, she does not need to be attacked by the entire world.

As far as revealing the idenity of the accused, this is a form of mob control: We have to have a body in custody, to feel save and served as citizens. Although they are accused by the state they are also protected. If the young boys are innocent of rape, then we most likely going to look upon them as idiots. I was young once and made many a mistake. I also do not believe, if guilt is the out come, that they young men are alone in their quilt. The schools they attended previously and Duke Universtiy and mostly their parents share in their guilt. Somehow along the way their beastly desires were not addressed properly.

If there accusation is a total fabrication, I cannot imagin what we all will experience and feel having been put through this.

Identifying the accused at this point and not the accuser is the better of two goods and the lesser of two evils.

Rilke, you missed the point. I am not questioning the law that applies to official sources. Whatever the “law” you are talking about…but does it apply to blogs? If DA is not revealing her name, fine. But does it apply to other individuals? Do you know for sure?

Her name is everywhere on the net. And all media knows it too – that’s how they got her conviction record.

“I cannot imagin what we all will experience and feel having been put through this.”—- Like being fools? And who we? Only those who are very naive or biased.

“Our desire to see the accuser is a morbid curosity, if not a secret desire to punish her further. The accuser will strongly be aware of our macabe character trait. ”

BS. To know more about her questionable character is to get to the truth of the matter sooner. How do you think we learned about her criminal past if not through knowing her name? Somebody had to know her name to dig. She’s a low-life punk and deserves to be outed and duly punished. But her race is likely to help her to avoid that punishment.

SHe’s not a poster child for a vicious racist gang-rape.

Igor: Even “a low-life punk” can be raped. I, for one, am not going to make the leap from her past bad behavior to assuming that she maliciously made the whole thing up. Just as I’m not going to leap from Mr. Finnerty’s presence at that fight in Georgetown (in which we don’t know exactly what role he played—for example, maybe he tried to pull the other guys off and just got lumped in with them because they were high school buddies, or maybe he led the assault; we simply don’t know) to assume that he’s a rapist and serial hate-criminal.

Whether or not the rape shield law applies to blogs is irrelevant in this instance, because this blog is my private property and I get to decide what is fair game for posting. And I’ve decided, independent of the legalities, that the alleged victim’s name is not fair game for this blog, even if others have made different judgments, and until/unless it is proven to my satisfaction that this whole thing is a fabrication, that policy will not change.

As an aside, I’ve become increasingly annoyed by the thinly-veiled racism in your comments. Please knock it off or go elsewhere.

As it is, this young woman is on the run b/c her name has been divulged and her family have been receiving death threats.

Here is an update on the cab driver whose testimony may actually help the prosecution.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1187945,00.html