Tawana Brawley Adviser Quits, Calls Her Story Lies

A former hospital security chief says he broke with the team advising Tawana Brawley, the black teen-ager who claims she was abducted and sexually assaulted by a gang of whites, because “it’s all a pack of lies.”

“I’m not going to live with all those lies,” Perry McKinnon, 39, an aide to the Rev. Al Sharpton, told the New York Daily News in a story published today.

Gov. Mario Cuomo said Tuesday the grand jury investigating the case should try to clear the names of anyone wrongfully accused by the teen-ager’s advisers as well as find out if she was in fact attacked. No evidence of rape was found.

Mother Seeks Sanctuary

Through Sharpton and her attorneys, C. Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox Jr., Brawley has refused to cooperate with a grand jury. Her mother, Glenda Brawley, has sought sanctuary in a church to avoid a 30-day jail sentence for refusing to testify.

Maddox and Mason, without offering evidence, have publicly accused a Dutchess County assistant district attorney, a state trooper and a former part-time Fishkill police officer of taking part in the alleged attack.

The Daily News and WCBS-TV reported Tuesday that McKinnon, a former director of security and communications at St. Mary’s Hospital, joined the team in January. He said he broke with the others a month ago.

“It’s all a pack of lies,” McKinnon told the newspaper and the TV station. “The real story is the political agenda of Sharpton, Maddox and Mason,” he told WCBS.

McKinnon, who said he is a former Georgia police officer and private investigator, said that Sharpton himself admitted having doubts about what actually happened to Brawley.

The Wappingers Falls teen-ager claims she was abducted and sexually assaulted by up to six white men over a four-day period in November. She was found wrapped in a garbage bag, her body covered with excrement and racial slurs.

“I brought it up to (Sharpton) that all the information doesn’t jibe to me,” McKinnon said, “that it just didn’t show where some whites had done it, and that we shouldn’t be taken off the beaten path by any rumors or any writing that was on her body. He said to me, ‘That sounds shaky to me, too.’ ”

Building a Movement

McKinnon said: “It’s not about the story, it’s about them trying to build a movement. They have dreams of winning this thing.”

The governor Tuesday said that everyone in the state may eventually be victimized by the Brawley lawyers’ “frightening mockery” of the law. He said Glenda Brawley should be arrested for defying a court order to testify.