Dynamite: Diallo did NOT claim gang rape in her asylum application

The fact stated in the title of this entry I did not learn in the media (though a search now reveals that that it has been discussed in the New York Times), but from a friend who read it in the prosecutor’s 25 page Recommendation for Dismissal, which I’ve now just read myself. The media do not seem to have generally picked up on this bombshell, but are still reporting that Diallo made up a false rape story on her asylum application. The New York Post is still calling for her to be deported because of it.

Because of the format of the prosecutors’ document, it’s not possible to copy the text. I have manually typed the relevant section below:

In response to questioning by prosecutors on May 16, 2011, the complainant volunteered that she had previously been gang raped by soldiers who had invaded her home in Guinea. In an interview held on May 30, 2011, she offered precise and powerful details about the number and nature of her attackers and the presence of her 2-year-old daughter at the assault scene, who, she said, was pulled from her arms and thrown to the ground. During both interviews, she identified certain visible scars on her person, which she claimed were sustained during the attack. On both occasions, the complainant recounted the rape with great emotion and conviction: she cried, spoke hesitatingly, and appeared understandably distraught, and during the first interview, even laid her head face down on her arms on a table in front of her.

In subsequent interviews conducted on June 8, 2011, and June 9, 2011, the complainant admitted to prosecutors that she had entirely fabricated this attack. When asked to explain why, she initially stated that she had lied about the gang rape because she had included it in her application for asylum, and she was afraid to vary from her application statement; she also stated that at the time she told prosecutors this account, she was not under oath. When confronted with the fact that her written asylum application statement made no mention of the gang rape [italics added], she stated that she had fabricated the gang rape, as well as other details of her life in Guinea, in collaboration with an unnamed male with whom she consulted as she was preparing to seek asylum. She told prosecutors this man had given her a cassette tape that included an account of a fictional rape, which she had memorized. Ultimately, she told prosecutors she decided not to reference the rape in her written application.

It is clear that, in a case where a complainant is accusing a defendant of a sexual assault, the fact that she has given a prior false account of a different sexual assault is highly relevant. That it was told to prosecutors in an intentional falsehood, and done in a completely persuasive manner—identical to the manner in which she recounted the encounter with the defendant—is also highly significant. But most significant is her ability to recount that fiction as fact with complete conviction.

… That she has previously persuaded seasoned prosecutors and investigators that she was the victim of another serious and violent—but false—sexual assault, with the same demeanor that she would likely exhibit at trial, is fatal.

So, unbelievably, the story we’ve been told repeatedly by the media for the last couple of months, that Diallo got into the U.S. on the basis of a false gang rape story, is itself untrue. But what is even more unbelievable is that Diallo had no need to tell the prosecutors the false rape story. She herself volunteered it, and when it turned out to be false, it became one of the two or three most damning facts against her, leading the prosecutors to seek dismissal of the case.

_____

Note: the prosecutors’ document is not as long as it sounds; it can be read in half an hour. And you don’t need to keep clicking on the right arrow to go to the next page; if you get the hang of it, you can scroll from one page to the next.

- end of initial entry -

How to open document in Adobe

LA to Gintas (8:56 p.m. 8/24/11)

The DA’s 25 page document is in a pdf type format which is within a web page. It’s not opening in a pdf viewer but in the browser. So the tools to select and copy text are not available. Would you know how to translate this document into a pdf format so that I could open it in Adobe and have access to Adobe’s tools like select and copy?

Gintas to LA (12:44 a.m. 8/25/11):

I was stumped, and then I clicked on the button on the bottom left of the document viewer, to view the thing in fullscreen mode. It’s not really fullscreen, more like full-in-the-browser, but there’s a link on the right side to the original PDF. I’ve attached it for your convenience.

LA to Gintas (5:00 a.m., 8/25):

You’re good. :-)

What I did was, I right-clicked on the link to the pdf and saved the document to my computer as a pdf, where it opens in Adobe.

If I had figured that out last evening I would have saved myself the job of typing the text I posted. It’s funny how they sort of hide that crucial information, and force the average viewer to deal with that rather clunky format. Both the “full screen” view and the native pdf make for much easier reading/scrolling than the “pdf box inside the browser” view that initially opens.

LA writes:

Here is the link to the pdf document. You can either left-click on it to load it in your browser, or right-click on it to save it as a pdf to your computer.

August 25

Paul Nachman writes:

I don’t grasp the significance of this revelation. I’m not arguing with you. I truly don’t understand.

Possibilities that occur to me:

- Besides being a dedicated liar, she’s a foolish one; or

- She received asylum for relatively trivial reasons, not gang rape by a regime’s soldiers. (No surprise there—except has she actually received asylum, or has she simply applied?)

So … what are you getting at?

LA replies:

In the first instance, I’m not “getting” at anything. I’m reporting an important piece of news which is central to the Diallo story. We were told by the prosecutors in their June 30 letter to the judge—and it’s been repeated many times in the media—that her claim in her asylum application that she had been gang raped in Guinea was false. Here is the NYT article from July 1:

Prosecutors disclosed that the woman had admitted lying in her application for asylum from Guinea; according to the letter, she “fabricated the statement with the assistance of a male who provided her with a cassette recording” that she memorized. She also said that her claim that she had been the victim of a gang rape in Guinea was also a lie.

Prior to that I’m not sure when or whether we had been told that she had been gang raped in Guinea. I don’t see any reference at VFR to a gang rape earlier than June 30 / July 1.

Of course she has been widely condemned, especially at VFR, for having made up such a terrible story in order to get into the U.S. by fraudulent means, but now it turns out that that story was not part of her asylum application. I believe that there may be other parts of her asylum application that were fraudulent, but this was not one of them.

Second, this is yet another remarkable revelation of Diallo’s character and mindset and an amazing twist in the whole saga. For all her skill at lying, she also has a compulsion to lie even when it won’t help her, a compulsion that leads to her lies being discovered. She told the prosecutors a lie that she didn’t have to tell them, a lie that a moment’s thought would have told her would inevitably be revealed as a lie (because the rape claim was not actually in her asylum application and the prosecutors would surely see this and question her about it); and it was this lie (which was so utterly convincing to them when she first told it to them), which, when they discovered it, convinced them, as much as any other factor, that she was such a total liar that there was no way to move forward with the case.

It’s also fascinating that in the very moment of our finding out that she did not lie to U.S. immigration authorities about a gang rape, a fact which somewhat reduces our negative portrait of her (actually it reduces it significantly, since it is the thing for which I had condemned her the most), we find out that as part of her out-of-control lying she gratuitously told the same lie to the prosecutors, and that it was this lie that undid her.

Gedaliah Braun (author of Racism, Guilt, and Self-Deceit, and a long time resident of Africa) writes:

Thanks so much for this. I intend to link this entire incident to the online version of my book. It is a classic example of how blacks lie—with complete abandon and total, absolute disregard for truth and reality. It is the kind of behaviour which, I think, your average white person has great difficulty even beginning to comprehend. I think Obama fits this mold quite well.

LA replies:

The phrase, “how blacks lie,” suggests that all blacks lie this way, which of course is not true.

Judith H. writes:

I read about this yesterday in the New York Times—I think it was a comment from a reader who had read the prosecution’s report.

Diallo lives in a fantasy world. Many of the black kids I knew in the urban school system where I worked were like that—they could be very convincing. One girl accused me of destroying her test papers which would prove that she had received passing grades. She claimed she had taken all the tests that semester and had passed them. I had no record of her tests. She convinced her parents, the school administrators, etc. They all marched into my room with an ominous look on their faces. The labor union representative told me it looked “bad” for me. Then I don’t know what happened. She couldn’t keep up the lie. She broke down under questioning and bawled like a baby. But my supervisor made me promise to give her make-up tests, which I didn’t want to do. So in the end, I didn’t even get the satisfaction of failing her. I had to pass her. School administrators will not allow a child to fail.

We still don’t know who told the Post that she was a prostitute and that she was plying her trade while under police protection. It was sources “close to the defense,” was it not? Was it true, was it a lie designed to discredit her? Has anyone ever discovered who the source was?

This is a very unsettling case and almost farcical considering his reputation. Of all the women on the planet to get involved with he picks a lunatic. Both parties are guilty. She is worse in this particular incident, but he is probably worse over all. I would feel so relieved just to know for sure what happened. Could he actually be completely innocent? But there was DNA.

LA replies:

Re the prostitute story, I would have written that off, because the sole source for it was the defense team via the New York Post; except that, as was also reported by the New York Post, on July 3:

“I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that it’s not true,” a senior prosecutor said about whether the woman was turning tricks while at the hotel.

About which I commented:

When a person in an official position or in the middle of a controversy announces that he can’t state with 100 percent certainty that something extremely damaging to his side is not true, that almost certainly means that it’s true. Remember Anthony Weiner declaring that he couldn’t say for sure that the man in the underwear wasn’t himself? A day or two later he admitted that it was himself.

However, there has been nothing on the prostitute story since then, so maybe it’s not true.

But I would add that there may be further damaging information about Diallo in the longer version of the Recommendation to Dismiss that was not submitted. According to the New York Times, the prosecutors cut down the original 75 page document to 25 pages, in order to reduce the embarrassment to Diallo.

On another point, you ask: “Could he actually be completely innocent? But there was DNA.”

Check out the prosecutor’s document (linked above, and it doesn’t take that long to read). It says there is conclusive physical evidence of a sexual encounter, but no conclusive physical evidence of forcible or non-consensual behavior. I also discussed the meaning of this revelation here.

Carol Iannone writes:

In the document (page 15, footnote 15), Diallo’s rolling on floor is cited as proof of her bizarre tendency to dramatic displays. However, they don’t say what point she was responding to:

On occasion, the complainant’s untruths were accompanied by dramatic displays of emotion. In the course of one interview, the prosecutor asked the complainant about a particular personal circumstance, and she calmly responded in the negative to the inquiry. In an interview two days later, she was asked a more specific question about the same subject. In response, she dropped to the floor, and physically rolled around while weeping; once composed, she said that she did not know the answer to the prosecutor’s question. In yet a later interview, the prosecutor revisited the issue. This time, the complainant responded affirmatively, in a matter-of-fact manner, to the question.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 24, 2011 09:49 PM | Send