The Nation - News from April 27, 1989

Tawana Brawley has confided to a friend that she and her mother faked the widely publicized rape and racial assault to prevent Ralph King, her mother’s live-in lover, from punishing the teen-ager, the friend has told Newsday. The friend, identified as Daryl T. Rodriguez, had been her boyfriend at the time of her disappearance in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., on Nov. 24, 1987, the newspaper said. Tawana, however, has denied Rodriguez’s account. Rodriguez, 19, said the black teen-ager, who was 15 at the time of the incident, told him she had run away from home after a beating by King that night in November, the same night she later claimed to have been abducted. She told him she and her mother made up the story of a sexual assault to gain King’s sympathy so he would allow her to return home without being punished. There was no plan to make the matter public, the paper said.