long and short of it: a black 18 year old freshman at Hofstra University who had accused five males of gang raping her in a rest room, a charge that had resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of four of them, in reality made up the story to conceal from her boyfriend that she had had consensual sex with the five men in the rest room.
hits on so many points of today’s reality that I don’t know where to begin commenting on it. I’ll just say that when it comes to moral depravity, this girl, Danmell Ndonye, is at the far, far left end of the bell curve.
Twisted motive behind rape story
By KIERAN CROWLEY, REUVEN FENTON and LUKAS I. ALPERT
September 18, 2009
The Hofstra freshman who had a raunchy restroom romp and then cried rape made up the twisted tale because she didn’t want her schoolmates—particularly her new boyfriend—to think she was easy, the beau told The Post yesterday.
“I think she needs a psychologist. She probably felt like, ‘They’ll think I’m a slut,’ ” her boyfriend, who asked not to be identified, told The Post.
Danmell Ndonye, 18, who had accused five men of gang rape, admitted the truth only when prosecutors confronted her after learning of a cellphone video that captured the whole sordid episode and showed she had willingly participated, officials said.
She created her outlandish tale when her boyfriend, a Hofstra student who’s been dating her since the semester began a few weeks ago, demanded to know where she had disappeared after a wild frat party early Sunday.
The two had been dancing together at the Alpha Kappa Alpha mixer at the school’s on-campus club, Hofstra USA, but got separated when a fight broke out.
The boyfriend said he called her repeatedly, but she didn’t answer her cellphone, so he went to her seventh-floor dorm room at Estabrook Hall. Moments later she appeared.
“As I was about to leave, she comes up and she has no shoes on, she is holding them in her hands. She looked like she just finished hot sex,” he said. “I said, ‘Where were you? What were you doing?’ She told me, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ “
Ndonye then dropped a bombshell.
“I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I just got raped,’ ” he said.
“It didn’t seem real to me. She was calm,” he continued. “Then she started crying and saying, ‘I was raped.’ She lied to me. I think she was embarrassed. I said to her, ‘You have to call public safety.’ She hesitated. It seemed like she didn’t want to.”
She then tried to backpedal.
“Oh, you know, no, it’s OK,” she told him, but he was incredulous.
“How could it be OK that you just got raped?” the boyfriend said.
So she relented—and a four-day nightmare began for four innocent men: Stalin Felipe, 19, his stepbrother, Kevin Taveras, 20, Jesus Ortiz, 19, and 21-year-old Rondell Bedward, a Hofstra senior who had invited the others to the party.
Cops also hunted for a fifth man, who has not been publicly identified.
The Nassau County District Attorney’s Office said Ndonye had sex with all five of the men, although Felipe, Ortiz and Bedward insist they didn’t have sex with her. Several used condoms were found at the scene, sources said.
Publicly branded as rapists, the men said they were hounded as the lowest type of criminal in prison and feared for their lives.
“They were harassing me more than anybody else, just because of what I was in there for,” Felipe said. “[The guards] were badgering me. They would push me and shove me.
“I thought I was dreaming. The worst part was hearing that I could do 25 years. I’m not even 25 years old. I’m just 19.”
Ortiz was forced to ask for protective custody, because “the inmates were referring to him as the rapist,” his lawyer Carlos Cruz said.
“In school, they are calling my daughter the sister of the raper,” said Taveras’ father, Ramiro, 43. “Unfortunately, everything doesn’t stop because the DA says go home and drops the charges.”
The father also said his son had received a letter from his employer, Cablevision, telling him he had been fired. But late last night, a Cablevision spokesman told The Post he would be reinstated.
The suspects’ redemption came only when Felipe’s cousin told authorities that the fifth man had taped the sex romp and that it would clear them all.
Even though they had not seen the video, prosecutors asked Ndonye about it and whether it would back her version of events, and her story crumbled.
“The young woman admitted that all of the encounters with the young men were consensual,” Nassau DA Kathleen Rice said. “A crime did not happen last Sunday at Hofstra.”
Prosecutors moved quickly to drop the charges, and the men were freed late Wednesday.
Rice said Ndonye could be charged for filing a false report.
“She is a very troubled young woman in need of much help,” she said.
Ndonye went into hiding yesterday.
At Hofstra, school officials moved quickly to reinstate Bedward, who had been suspended following the allegations. They also suspended Ndonye, and sources said she and her family cleared out her dorm room.
Lawyers for Taveras and Ortiz said they were considering filing a lawsuit, but Felipe said he was willing to forgive Ndonye.
Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick, Jessica Simeone and Larry Celona
kieran.crowley@nypost.com
