Duke Lacrosse Players, Their Families Talk to Newsweek About What Happened That Night

Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann tells Newsweek that last Christmas, when he heard the news that the rape charges against him and two of his teammates were being dropped, but the prosecutor Mike Nifong was going ahead with the charges of kidnapping and committing a sexual offense, "That was the most frustrating point in the case, because you're like, 'This man will not let it go, no matter what we do.'"

Last Wednesday, Seligmann and his teammates Collin Finnerty and David Evans were declared innocent of all charges in the case that had appalledand titillated the U.S. for more than a year.

After the attorney general's announcement that completely vindicated them, Finnerty and Seligmann, as well as their parents, some siblings and Finnerty's girlfriend, spoke to Newsweek about the experience. The magazine als oobtained the handwritten statements given by Evans and the other two team captains, Daniel Flannery and Matthew Zash, to the Durham police two days after the alleged rape. The statements, never before made public, and interviews with defense attorneys familiar with the evidence, tell the real story of what happened that night, reports senior writer Susannah Meadows and Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas in the April 23 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 16).

As Newsweek reports, that night in March 2006, after the strippers arrived at the party, the accuser appeared to be intoxicated and had trouble standing up, much less dancing. Half-heartedly, she began kissing the other dancer. Later, when the night was played up as a violent bacchanal, a "Boys Gone Wild" situation, Seligmann would reflect thatanyone watching the real thing would have been bored. At the time, he says,"We didn't know how to react. It was disgusting. I was very uncomfortable and I wasn't the only one." Indeed, in a photo taken by one of the players and obtained by Newsweek, Seligmann appears to be recoiling as he watches the dancers. The performance lasted all of five minutes.

One night about a week after the incident, Finnerty and another player noticed a Take Back the Night rally as they walked to the library. Curious, they went over to hear the speakers decry sexual assault on campus. Activists were handing out wanted posters with pictures of the team. A student came up and began talking to Finnerty's teammate.

Before thestudent walked off, he pulled out a tape recorder and made a show of hitting the stop button, to make clear he had been recording the conversation. "You could see that something big was going on," recalls Finnerty, who wondered if he'd see the conversation in print.

Looking hugely relieved at a press conference last Wednesday, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann expressed hope that the system would be reformed to stop runaway prosecutors.

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