Stereotypes all over this case

Joye Brown

April 19, 2006

A rich kid. A white boy. A jock. Collin Finnerty, one of Long Island's own, was arrested early yesterday on charges of raping and kidnapping a black stripper hired to dance at an off-campus party.

Finnerty goes to Duke University. He plays lacrosse. He's from the rich part of rich Garden City. He was one of the legion of lacrosse players at Duke who gave DNA samples to North Carolina prosecutors after a wild party at an off-campus house.

That's all true.

But do those truths, like so many stepping stones, inalterably lead to Finnerty's being guilty? To being a kidnapper? And a rapist?

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If it's wrong to ascribe guilt to someone because he's poor, black and desperate, isn't it equally wrong to assume someone is guilty because he's rich, white and privileged?

We've been building to this since the night of March 14, when a Durham mother and student told police she was held against her will and raped by Duke lacrosse players who hired her to entertain at an off-campus party.

This case showcases it all: sex, class, privilege, race, power, arrogance and a Yankee-Dixie divide tailor-made for great television, terrific tabloid coverage and Internet hits galore.

And the profile? The nation has developed an obsession with rich white kids behaving badly. It gets ratings. Why do you think there were so many television trucks parked in Garden City yesterday?

But it's time for a reality check. What happened in Durham? For all we think we know, there's more we don't know at all.

In 1990, a woman accused a group of white St. John's students of sexual assault.

The victim, a fellow St. John's student, was a black immigrant from Jamaica. Defense attorneys, as is common in such cases, questioned her credibility.

Some of the accused were St. John's lacrosse players from Long Island. They were described as "good kids" by their former high school coaches.

The university, headed by a president just months into his job, was slammed for moving too slowly on the case. A similar criticism was leveled against Duke's president.

Women's groups protested the St. John's case. So did black and immigrant groups. And the case drew national attention to so-called "acquaintance rape."

During the two years that followed the accusation, three of the suspects were acquitted at trial. Four others pleaded to lesser charges, under plea agreements in which they acknowledged guilt.

St. John's suspended the students and its lacrosse program, for almost a decade, fell dormant.

Attorney Stephen P. Scaring of Garden City remembers that time well. He defended one of the acquitted Long Island students.

"I'm seeing the same thing that happened with St. John's," he said yesterday when I asked him about the Duke case.

"Everybody has their own agenda," he said. "The media has its own agenda. The prosecutor, the defense has its own agenda. ... Everybody is jumping to conclusions."

And when that happens, he said, "The facts of the case always get lost in the shuffle. People forget that this is a real case involving real people's lives."

For all of yesterday's hoopla, let's not lose sight of reality: This is a sordid case at its beginning, not its end.