The Nation - News from May 6, 1988

Advisers to Tawana Brawley, the black teen-ager who claimed she was abducted and raped by white men in Upstate New York last November, denied a report that she attended a birthday party during the time she was reported missing. At a Manhattan news conference, Brawley’s lawyers and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who have advised Brawley not to cooperate with a special state grand jury investigating her story, charged that WCBS-TV, which broadcast the report, had depended on a witness who was not credible. Sharpton said he could produce witnesses who would testify Brawley was not at the party on Nov. 27, 1987, the day before she was found, smeared with feces and with racial epithets written on her body, near the apartment her family had recently vacated in Wapingers Falls.