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Rape report isn't 1st for Duke accuser

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 28, 2006

DURHAM, N.C. - The woman who says she was raped by three members of Duke's lacrosse team also told police 10 years ago she was raped by three men, filing a 1996 complaint claiming she had been assaulted three years earlier when she was 14.

Authorities in nearby Granville County said Thursday that none of the men named in the decade-old report were ever charged with sexual assault there, but they didn't have details why.

A phone number for the accuser has been disconnected and her family declined to comment to the Associated Press. But relatives told Essence magazine in an online story this week that the woman declined to pursue the case out of fear for her safety.

The existence of the report surprised defense attorneys, one of whom has sought information about the accuser's past for use in attacking her credibility.

"That's the very first I've heard of that," said Bill Cotter, the attorney for indicted lacrosse player Collin Finnerty, who along with fellow Duke sophomore Reade Seligmann is charged with first-degree rape, kidnapping and sexual assault.

Attorney Joe Cheshire, who represents one of the uncharged players on the team, said he wants to know if prosecutors in the current case knew about the earlier allegation, or if the accuser told them about it.

He said he found it notable that authorities apparently declined to prosecute the earlier case.

"These are serious allegations, particularly for a person that age. In my mind, it would raise real issues about her credibility," he said.

Attorneys for Seligmann asked the court this week to order the state to turn over the accuser's medical, legal and education records, and hold a pretrial hearing to "determine if the complaining witness is even credible enough to provide reliable testimony."

The accuser, a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University in Durham, told police she was hired to perform as a stripper at a March 13 party and was raped by three men.

According to the Creedmoor police report in August 1996, when the woman was 18, she told officers she was raped and beaten by three men "for a continual time" in 1993, when she was 14. She told police she was attacked at an "unspecified location" on a street in Creedmoor, a town near Durham.

The report lists the names of the three men, but no other details. Creedmoor police Chief Ted Pollard said Thursday he had no recollection of the report.

[Last modified April 28, 2006, 01:17:12]