The Nation - News from March 11, 1988

A black teen-ager who says she was abducted and sexually attacked by six whites also has been victimized by the minister who assumed a role as her guardian, a veteran civil rights lawyer said. The lawyer, Conrad Lynn, has asked the New York state Department of Social Services to determine if Tawana Brawley, 16, has suffered “emotional and educational neglect” while in the care of the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton, a Brooklyn minister, has kept the girl away from authorities investigating her claim that she was kidnaped near her home in Wappingers Falls. “He’s using her as a pawn,” said Lynn, 79, chief counsel to the mid-Hudson region of the NAACP. Sharpton and Brawley’s two lawyers have advised her not to cooperate with a state investigation into the alleged attack and have branded Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams, the special prosecutor, as racists.