NEW YORK : State Official to Drop Gang Rape Cases

A day after the second of five men was acquitted in the alleged gang rape of a woman at a restaurant, New York’s attorney general said he will drop the remaining cases. “I have arrived at this decision following a careful analysis of the two prior trials and the evidence currently available,” Dennis Vacco said. The family of Krista Absalon, who testified in the two trials that she had been raped, also said she will not testify again. Absalon, 28, claimed that five men had intercourse with her in October 1991 while she was unconscious after drinking excessively at the Casablanca Restaurant in Gouverneur, 95 miles north of Syracuse. She also filed a pending $4-million lawsuit against the men.