Here is a paragraph from a MUCKRAKER piece of 10 July: “The saga of the lady of the afternoon (hereinafter referred to as LOTA) is on again after having been interdicted by LOTA herself. Readers of MUCKRAKER of June 20 or the Lexington Herald-Leader may remember the details. If not, that article is in the Archives for perusal and may even be interesting to those who haven’t been aware of this strange happening. The other player in the affair is a god of the hardwood (hereinafter referred to as GOTH, naturally, with all the potential meaning involved), who dallied with LOTA on an April afternoon in a university dormitory housing mostly the august and much revered basketball players. She called the hanky panky rape some 24-36 hours after the fact, while GOTH called it consensual – through his lawyer, of course. Later after making her charge, she stopped cooperating, so, without a victim, the matter was ended. GOTH, a high-profile player, was named, of course, especially in Sports Pages all over the land, but LOTA, a 29-year-old mom, was spared that notoriety, at least in the city of its circumstances, the better to protect her good name, even though the local daily knew it early on and actually contacted the woman a few times, even to the point of writing her a letter.”
The plot thickened again. LOTA filed a complaint of rape with the office of the County Attorney, thus reestablishing the charge, only to have said official dismiss it. LOTA’s lawyers took recourse to the Commonwealth Attorney for his decision as to whether or not to present evidence, if any, to a Grand Jury. GOTH, of course, has been nowhere near Lexington, since this is the time that all former Goths are or have been angling for a spot on an NBA team or perhaps one in Germany or maybe one in Japan. GOTH is in apparent good health, at least as far as HIV is concerned, since GOTH’s attorney has furnished proof to LOTA that his man does not possess that particular malady. One wonders, of course, if LOTA has furnished similar information to GOTH, but perhaps that is beside the point, since it isn’t illegal, though immoral, to have un-marital consensual sex in a college dormitory on an afternoon in April. In any case, since GOTH tested negatively, one may assume that LOTA is HIV-negative. There was a time when hanky-panky was a rather simple event, but now things are complicated.
It turns out that Commonwealth Attorney Ray Larson has concluded that the evidence presented, eyewitness as well as documented such as cell-phone records, etc., proves that there was no rape instead of that there was. He informed LOTA’s attorneys of this in a seven-page letter, explaining the matter and indicating, of course, that no grand jury would be empanelled. LOTA’s attorneys could pursue the matter through the lengthy appeals process, but the fact that LOTA’s cell-phone records indicated that she called GOTH twice on the day after the alleged rape took place and a total of 143 times over a three-month period might discourage such action. There are other zany things mixed up in the affair, but suffice it to say that LOTA apparently sort of seduced GOTH for reasons known only to herself – or, perhaps to others, depending on the reasons.
The Commonwealth Attorney’s office spent nearly 200 hours on this matter. Other agencies, such as the police department and the county attorney’s office, spent hours on the matter. The charge was not only baseless, but cost the taxpayers a lot of money. One is reminded of the recent Florida case in which the “bride who fled her wedding” was compelled to ante-up the cost incurred in her escapade as officials all over the place looked for a “missing woman” who was never missing but just having a high old time in a number of states. If memory serves, the cost was somewhere around $40,000, and that probably did not cover the actual expense of the “woman-hunt.”
This leads one to wonder if there was some sort of plan by LOTA – or by LOTA and others – to squeeze huge amounts of dollars out of the university in a civil action that would almost certainly be contingent upon a criminal conviction for success. GOTH, at last reckoning, had not caught on in the NBA, after not having even been drafted in the first place, and wouldn’t have funds sufficient to bother with a civil suit against him, not that it would have much chance of success. Without doubt, the whole frivolous affair has cost a lot of money to taxpayers. GOTH, of course, had his name plastered all over the local press and other media, while LOTA remained anonymous until this rotten matter was turned down by the prosecutors.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment