THE CASE of Megan Williams caused revulsion across the US two years ago. She described to police how she had been held in a ramshackle trailer on a remote hillside in West Virginia for more than a week and raped, stabbed, doused in hot water and forced to eat rat, dog and human faeces.
An African-American, she said she had been subjected to racial insults throughout the ordeal by her captives, men and women, all white.
In a country where race remains a raw issue, Williams became a cause célèbre, winning the support of prominent African-Americans such as the civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton.
But Williams this week threw the legal system into confusion when she said she had fabricated most of the evidence, mainly to get back at her boyfriend, Bobby Brewster, who was one of those jailed.
“The reason she is coming forward now is that she wants to right the wrong perpetrated on these six individuals. She cannot continue to live this lie,” her lawyer, Byron Potts, told a press conference in Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday. Potts added that she claimed her wounds had been self-inflicted.
Six people, including Brewster and his mother, Frankie, are serving long jail sentences. Both Brewster and his mother had criminal records, the former a conviction for shooting dead his father.
John Bennett, the prosecuting lawyer in Logan County, West Virginia, did not respond yesterday to a question over whether the case would have to be re-opened. Nor did lawyers for the six in jail say whether they would call for the case to be dismissed.
But Bennett’s predecessor, Brian Abraham, said he was mystified by the recanting. “It’s a little absurd given the other evidence in the case, and what she’d said before. There’s no basis for her recanting her testimony.”
Abraham said the case remained solid as the investigators early on realised they could not rely on the testimony of Williams, who has learning difficulties, and that the defendants had been convicted on their own statements and physical evidence.
None of the six has appealed against their sentences.
“These defendants were convicted not based on what she said, but the evidence,” Abraham said.
Williams was due to speak at a press conference but failed to appear, citing death threats. Aged 22 and living in Columbus, she has opened herself up to prosecution for lying to investigators, but her learning difficulties might rule this out.
Although the case received widespread media attention, some African-American groups claimed there would have been more of a public outcry had the victim been white. Some, such as Sharpton, took up her cause; he spoke at a rally for her and gave her a personal donation of $1,000 (€665).
This week, Sharpton sent a letter to the Logan County prosecutor asking him to look into the case. “If Ms Williams has, in fact, fabricated her story, then I urge your office to vindicate any wrongfully convicted individuals,” he wrote.
Sharpton was a vocal supporter of Tawana Brawley, a black teenager who 20 years ago made a bogus claim about being kidnapped and raped by white men.– ( Guardianservice)