Saturday, September 29, 2007
Duke president sorry for lack of support to lacrosse players
Associated Press
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University president Richard Brodhead apologized Saturday for not better supporting the men's lacrosse
team and their families after three players were falsely accused in last year's highly publicized rape scandal.
... The fact
is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel
abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a
mistake. I take responsibility for it and I apologize for it.
Duke President Richard Brodhead
Brodhead, speaking at the university's law school, said he regretted Duke's "failure to reach out" in a "time of extraordinary peril" after a woman accused three players of raping her at a March 2006 party thrown by the team.
"Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication
right would never have been easy," Brodhead said. "But the fact
is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel
abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a
mistake. I take responsibility for it and I apologize for it."
Brodhead spoke at a school-sponsored forum on legal and ethical
issues common to high-profile cases, and he received a standing ovation following his speech. He left afterward and school officials said he would not be available for further comment.
As authorities began to investigate the allegations, Brodhead
and the university initially suspended the highly ranked team from
play. He later canceled the remainder of its season and ousted
longtime coach Mike Pressler. Meanwhile, Durham County prosecutor
Mike Nifong labeled the team "hooligans" as he searched for
suspects.
But even as Nifong won indictments against players Reade
Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans, it became clear the
allegations had no merit.
State prosecutors determined in April the accuser's story was
a lie, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper called the
three players innocent victims of Nifong's "tragic rush to
accuse."
Nifong was disbarred in June for more than two dozen violations
of the state bar's rules of professional conduct, including
withholding results of critical DNA tests, and resigned from
office. He spent one night in jail earlier this month after a judge
held him in criminal contempt of court for lying to a court about
having provided those test results to defense attorneys.
In the early days of the case, Brodhead was generally cautious
in his comments, saying the players should be presumed innocent
while also insisting the crimes alleged had no place at the elite
private university.
Brodhead said Saturday he worried that making numerous public
comments could be interpreted as an attempt by Duke to "influence
the judicial process," especially since Nifong was insisting a
crime had occurred.
That may have created an impression that Duke did not care about
the accused students, Brodhead said, which he said was untrue but
still something he regrets.
"Duke needed to be clear that it demanded fair treatment for
its students," he said. "I took that completely for granted. If
anyone doubted it, then I should have been more explicit,
especially as the evidence mounted that the prosecutor was not
acting in accordance with the standards of his profession."
Brodhead also said the school could have done more to show that
some members of Duke's faculty who were openly critical of the
lacrosse team did not speak for the university as a whole.
Duke has reached private settlements with Pressler, now the
coach at Division II Bryant in Rhode Island, as well as the three
cleared players and a teammate who was not indicted but accused a
professor of giving him a failing grade because he was a lacrosse
player.
Brodhead said the university is planning a national conference
of lawyers, educators and student affairs leaders to discuss how
schools should deal with students facing serious criminal charges.
