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CBSNews /

AP/ October 21, 2009, 9:09 PM

Woman in W.Va. Torture Case: I Lied

An attorney for a black woman who claimed torture by a white group in West Virginia says his client fabricated the story to get back at a boyfriend who had beaten her up.

Megan Williams' attorney, Byron Potts, said at a news conference Wednesday that Williams came forward because she no longer wants to live a lie. Potts encouraged West Virginia authorities to re-evaluate the case.

Williams told authorities in 2007 that she had been beaten, raped, forced to eat animal feces and taunted with racial slurs for days. She now lives in Columbus.

Seven white men and women were convicted in the case, and most are serving long prison terms.

Prosecutors, who knew about the relationship even during the case, dismissed Williams' new claim, and lawyers for the defendants would not discuss their plans. Williams' supporters were cautious about responding to the statement by a woman whose mother described her during the 2007 case as "slow."

Brian Abraham, the former Logan County prosecutor who pursued the cases, said authorities realized early in the investigation that they could not rely on statements from Williams, who tended to embellish and exaggerate details. Instead, he said, the seven defendants were convicted on their own statements and physical evidence.

"If she's going to say that she made it all up, that's absurd," Abraham said. "This looks like another attempt to generate more publicity."

The assaults occurred in September 2007 at a trailer in a rural area of Logan County, about 50 miles from Charleston. In an interview the following month, Williams told The Associated Press she thought she was going to a party and tagged along with a woman she barely knew.

Williams said she was held captive for several days and was tortured, beaten, and forced to eat rat, dog and human feces. She was also raped by a group of white men and women.

A passer-by heard cries from the shed where she was kept, and sheriff's deputies responding to an anonymous tip found her hours later, limping toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying, "Help me."

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who donated $1,000 to Williams' family as a Christmas gift, and a group called Black Lawyers for Justice had urged prosecutors to pursue hate-crime charges.

The lawyers group organized a march on Williams' behalf in November 2007. Sharpton addressed a rally in Charleston a month later.

At the time, Abraham said that because Williams had had a relationship with one of the defendants - Bobby Brewster - it would be difficult to prove that a hate crime occurred. Even so, one of the defendants, Karen Burton, pleaded guilty to a state hate-crime charge.

In a phone call to the AP on Wednesday, Sharpton said the matter should be handled delicately, citing "psychological issues" with Williams.

"This isn't cut and dried either way," he said. "Right is right, but I have no idea if tomorrow her story will change back."

In a January interview with The Call & Post, a black newspaper in Cleveland, Williams acknowledged she had been mistreated but said her mother made her embellish the story for exposure and financial gain. Williams told the newspaper that she was afraid of her mother, who knew some of the defendants.

Williams' mother, Carmen Williams, died in June.

Those convicted were Brewster, his mother, Frankie Brewster; Danny Combs; George Messer; Burton; and Burton's daughter Alisha Burton and son Linnie Burton Jr.

Linnie Burton Jr. was the only defendant not to serve jail time. He was convicted of a misdemeanor battery charge and given a six-month suspended sentence.

Lawyers for the seven did not immediately return phone calls Wednesday or declined to comment. Abraham said none of the seven have appealed.

"This was a very detailed criminal investigation," he said.

It will be up to the defendants to decide how they will respond to Williams' statements, said Philip Morrison II, executive director of the West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Institute.

Morrison questioned whether Williams' actions would be sufficient to overturn their confessions, saying, "What are they going to say, 'I didn't really mean that?"'

In late August, a woman who claimed to represent Williams arrived at the offices of the AP in Columbus and said new information on the case would be released at a downtown rally Oct. 21. A flier announced that Williams was "coming out with the truth." There were no signs of a rally Wednesday afternoon.

The AP generally does not identify suspected victims of sexual assault, but Williams and her mother agreed to release her name. Carmen Williams said she wanted people to know what her daughter had endured.

People who supported Williams were guarded Wednesday.

"We did have some concerns about what was being done at the time and how it was carried out by Megan and the family, because of her mental condition," said the Rev. Audie Murphy, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Logan and Boone counties in West Virginia.

"We feel the legal system will handle it accordingly," Murphy said. "We didn't rush to judgment then, and we're not rushing to judgment now."

Sharpton said Potts told him Tuesday that Williams wanted to apologize to him for lying.

Sharpton has sent a letter to Logan County prosecutor John Bennett asking him to look into the new claims.

"If Ms. Williams has, in fact, fabricated her story, then I urge your office to vindicate any wrongfully convicted individuals," Sharpton wrote.

Bennett said Wednesday that he would not be able to investigate the case because he represented one of the seven who were convicted, but Morrison said that would be for a judge to decide.





AP
37 Comments Add a Comment
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toldyouso21 says:
ONE OF THE CONVICTS SAYS MEGAN IS LYING, THAT THE TORTURE, RAPE AND BEATINGS WAS REAL, THOUGH NOT RACIALLY MOTIVATED:

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/9000/9275042/Convicted_woman_says_WVa_torture_case_was_real FUNNY HOW CBS IS NOT CARRYING THIS TURN IN THE STORY YET....
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longtree-2009 says:
there is already enough hatred, racism, among all the races. this woman just incited more racism, more divisiveness. she should be punished severely and anyone else that participated in her lies. what a piece of horse manure. actually, horse manure is above her.
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SusanStoHelit says:
Hmmm - a thought. Is it her that want's publicity, attention? Or is it her lawyer, who sees an opportunity to get his name out there, by using a mentally retarded woman as a patsy?
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SusanStoHelit says:
She's mentally retarded, and likely is just looking for some attention. The physical evidence - she was indeed found chained up, beaten, stabbed, etc. - is solid. The confessions are from enough people that they are unlikely to all be false, and match the forensic evidence.

The case was never about her words - she was too obviously an unreliable witness - it was about what the evidence said.
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justsane-2009 says:
i'm inclined to believe that she is lying about lying. i went back and read some of the reports issued at the time of the assault. the young woman was rescued from a shed, had some stab wounds (can't find how many), and her hair had been ripped out. she claimed to have been held captive for a number of days (the police determined that it had been six.) she was hospitalized after her rescue. it seems logical that the physical exam made at the time would either confirm or refute many of the charges that were made, like the multiple rapes, stabbings, and beatings.

while there is no doubt that innocent people are convicted of crimes that they didn't commit, and do in fact sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit, it seems pretty unlikely that seven defendants would all do so. it also appears that there was far too much physical evidence of the crimes for it to have been staged by a woman of limited mental capacity.
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timing20002000 replies:
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I don't know what to believe. I say do the case over again and see if there is enough evidence to keep these people in or out. She is "slow" so who knows what the truth is.
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toldyouso21 says:
SHE'S LYING NOW..FOR SOME REASON. A least part of the story is true because she was found after a neighbor called about a black woman being chained up in an old trailer. She was found chained to the inside of the trailer, naked, covered in feces with stab wounds and at least 2 of the people admitted to raping her and cutting her. So why is her story changing now? Threats to her family?
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djseavy says:
Does anybody seriously believe that prosecutors are out for justice? They are politicians - period. Look at what's going on in Texas. Prosecutors are just as dirty as every other politician. The 7 confessions? A simple and realistic explaination - they were under the threat of even more prison time if they went to trial. And trials are won by innuendo and inference by prosecutors - the facts and truth mean nothing.
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Blatensphere says:
How do 7 people confess to something that didn't happen?

Sounds like something happened.
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presjfk replies:
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Anyone charged with a crime and given the choice of life in prison or a plea deal, and this happens every day, often opt for the plea even if they are innocent.
SusanStoHelit replies:
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People confess to things they didn't do all the time - pressure, fear, etc. However - there's a lot of physical evidence in this case to say that's not what happened here.
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Questionews says:
Prosecutors could care less about whether or not someone is innocent or guilty. They are there to get a conviction, period. They only way they climb the ladder is to have as many convictions as possible and if an innocent person is sent away to prison, they really don't care as long as they can have one more notch on their pistol.
I would bet any amount of money that if all prosecutors were given a polygraph test & denied that they ever knowingly sent an innocent person to prison, 99% would fail.
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endurorob_5 says:
stuart-johns2 October 21, 2009 1:03 PM EDT
by endurorob_5 October 21, 2009 11:14 AM EDT
Since thay have confessions and testimony from the perpetrators what is the point of her recanting her testimony. Even if as gramto8 says that she has been threatended what good would it do for her to recant when it is their own words that convicted them.
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Shockingly, I agree with you.
Reply to this comment by endurorob_5 October 21, 2009 1:15 PM EDT
That is shocking and disturbing. I will now go meditate to try and understand this anomaly.



I have meditated and determined the obvious answer is that as a result of our conversations on this site you have begun to see things from a more centrist/independent point of view and are on the verge of denying your liberal/progressive idealogy.
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stuart-johns2 replies:
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You so don't know me. lol
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