Kamala Harris’s deputies awarded a speaking slot to advocates for rape survivors just after the slot given to five men who had been convicted in a brutal 1989 gang rape in New York’s Central Park.
The enthusiastic audience showed no dismay at the contrast, in part, because the five men were released and exonerated after a jailhouse claim by another man who admitted to raping the same woman.
The five men were introduced to the Democrats’ national audience by Al Sharpton, a New York-based political entrepreneur with a very controversial career entangled with antisemitism. “Now I want to bring out some young men that I fought for … They were known as the Central Park Five. Now they are the Exonerated Five!” he said.
One of the five, Corey Wise, said to audience cheers:
My name is Corey Wise. Thirty-five years ago, my friends and I were in prison for a crime we did not commit. Our youth was stolen from us. Every day as we walked into the courtroom, people screamed at us, threatened us, because of Donald Trump. He spent $85,000 on a full-page ad in the New York Times … We were innocent kids, but we all — but we served a total of 41 years in prison.
“As my friend Corey Wise just said, 45 [Donald Trump] wanted us unalived. He wanted us dead,” said Yusuf Salaam, a member of the group who is now an elected New York City councilman.
The next scheduled speakers were Amy Resner, a former prosecutor, and Karrie Delaney, director of federal affairs at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.
“For Kamala, practicing law was always about protecting the vulnerable and giving the victims a voice,” said Resner. “Women who were sexually assaulted, children who were mistreated and sexually abused, she helped them navigate their nightmares and demand justice for their injuries, and she did it all with grit and grace,” she said.
“Survivors of sexual assault struggle to be heard over the cacophony of voices, demeaning, discrediting, and vilifying them,” said Delaney. “When powerful offenders are allowed to manipulate public opinion by attacking their victim’s credibility, all victims suffer.”
The New York rape victim survived the ordeal but has no memory of the event.
Anne Coulter reported the rape, evidence, and releases in November 2023:
Here’s just some of the evidence against The Five [Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise].
When Santana was being driven to the precinct house for general mayhem, he blurted out: “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel the woman’s tits.”
At this point, the jogger’s body hadn’t been found yet. The police knew nothing about any rape.
— Another boy, picked up with Richardson, told the police that he knew who did “the murder,” naming McCray. Richardson concurred, saying, “Yeah. That’s who did it.”
Again, the police were unaware of any rape or murder.
The next morning, Richardson pointed to the 102nd Street transverse, telling officers, “This is where we got her.”
Dennis Commedo, part of the larger group wilding that night, told the police that, when he ran into Richardson, he had said, “We just raped somebody.”
Two of Wise’s friends said that the next day, he told them, “You heard about that woman that was beat up and raped in the park last night? That was us!”
…
Salaam (our newly elected councilman) confessed to the rape after the detective questioning him said that fingerprints had been found on the jogger’s clothing. Why would he do that — unless he knew the prints might be his?
Democratic judges, prosecutors, and politicians exonerated the five convicted men after an incarcerated criminal claimed the crime. Coulter wrote:
More than a decade later, when psychopathic killer Matias Reyes came forward to “confess” that he alone had raped the jogger — a crimefor which he would face no additional punishment — DNA testing on the semen could prove only that he’d raped her, not that he’d acted alone, or whether, as a former cellmate says, he’d heard the jogger’s screams and ran to join the attack in progress.
…
Reyes not only faced no additional punishment for his “confession,” but he was rewarded with a favorable prison transfer. But his word is the sole fact on which the “exoneration” of The Five rests. The police were prohibited from interviewing Reyes. He was not given a polygraph. There was no hearing to determine his credibility. His own lawyer described Reyes as a “psychopath who cannot separate fact from fancy.” (He said, for example, that the jogger got up and ran away after he savagely raped her.)
But that’s all water under the bridge for former prosecutor Harris and her schedulers.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command,” 1984.
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