Tawana Brawley Rape Hoax Leads To Defamation Damage Payout 26 Years Later

Tawana Brawley, who fabricated
 a sensational rape story in 1987,
may be forced to finally pay damages
 to one of the men falsely accused.

The nation was stunned in 1987 by an African-American teenager's accusation that she had been brutally gang raped by a group of white men, including a local prosecutor and a local police officer. Those accusations turned out to be an elaborate hoax -- and decades later, one of the men wrongfully accused in the fabricated horrific crime is finally receiving reparations payments.

Eleven years after Tawana Brawley's sensational story was disproved, former prosecutor Steven Pagones successfully sued Brawley, her attorneys and Rev. Al Sharpton -- who had gotten involved with the case -- for slander, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal. Although the others paid up, for years Brawley refused to pay the $185,000 in damages, worth closer to $400,000 with interest.

Brawley now works in Richmond, Va. as a nurse at the The Laurels of Bon Air nursing home, under a different name, Tawana V. Gutierrez, according to the Journal. A court has ordered Brawley's employer to garnish her wages in order to begin paying Pagones.

So far, Pagones has received around $3,700, the Journal reports. Read More...