Woman who accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006 admits she made it all up

Crystal Mangum, who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape after working as a stripper at an off-campus party they threw in 2006, admitted in a new interview the accusations were false and that she lied.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong. And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me and made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God,” Mangum, 46, said on the “Let’s Talk With Kat” podcast.

She also said she hopes the three men she accused, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, “can forgive me and I want them to know that I love them and they didn’t deserve that.”

The interview was conducted on Nov. 13 at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where Mangum has been serving a 14-18-year sentence for second-degree murder in the 2011 stabbing of her boyfriend, Reginald Daye, since 2013.

The Mangum-Duke incident was racially charged, as she is Black and all three accused players are White. Then-Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong took the case himself, telling The New York Times at one point that “the thing that most of us found so abhorrent, and the reason I decided to take it over myself, was the combination ganglike rape activity accompanied by the racial slurs and general racial hostility,” according to the order for Mr. Nifong’s eventual disbarment.

The three players maintained their innocence throughout the case, with Mr. Evans calling Mangum’s account of the party and claims of rape “fantastic lies,” according to the Associated Press.

Mr. Nifong charged Mr. Evans, Mr. Seligmann and Mr. Finnerty with rape and, after Mangum changed her story at the time, kidnapping and sexual offense, but he was ultimately jailed for one day for criminal contempt for witholding exculpatory DNA evidence.

Then-District Attorney Roy Cooper, who is currently the governor of North Carolina and who took on the case after Mr. Nifong was removed over his comments to the press, dropped the charges and declared the three Duke players innocent, reported The New York Times.

Mangum was never charged with perjury or other crimes relating to making false accusations. At the time, Mr. Cooper said that “she may have actually believed the many different stories that she has been telling,” according to Fox News.

The three players settled with Duke University for an undisclosed sum shortly after their charges were dropped and settled with the city of Durham, North Carolina, in 2014, according to CNN.