The physical contrast between the 108-pound accuser and the hulking heavy-weight was as stark as the difference between their two stories. In a preview of Tyson’s own upcoming testimony, defense attorney Vincent Fuller described the accuser as a “sophisticated” young woman with a “compelling desire for money.” But the complainant, a contestant in last summer’s Miss Black America pageant in Indiana, limned another picture altogether. According to testimony, she and the other contestants were rehearsing when Tyson, there to film a promotional video for the beauty pageant, walked into the room. The alleged victim said Tyson approached her and asked, “You’re a nice Christian girl, aren’t you?” “Yeah,” she replied. She agreed to go out with him that night,giving him her hotel-room number. Tyson phoned her from his limousine at 1:36 in the morning, after the woman had gone to bed. According to prosecutor J.Gregory Garrison, she begged off at first, then, unsuccessfully tried to persuade a roommate to come along. She agreed after Tyson told her he was leaving town later the same day. The alleged victim came down, camera in hand; she thought they would make the round of parties connected with Indiana Black Expo, the pageant’s sponsor, and she wanted to take snapshots of celebrities.
The date purportedly took a wrong turn as soon as the young woman entered the limo. She said Tyson kissed her on the lips, and she recoiled-both in surprise and because he had bad breath-but still didn’t anticipate trouble. Then Tyson said he needed to make a brief stop back at his hotel. When she emerged from the bathroom in his suite, the prizefighter, stripped down to his shorts, allegedly grabbed her and tore at her clothes. According to her testimony, he penetrated her with his fingers and she cried, “Please, you’re hurting me! Please stop.” Tyson “started laughing, like it was a game.” He continued, telling her, “Don’t fight me, Mommy.” She claimed she pummeled him throughout but “it was like hitting a wall.” After the alleged rape, Tyson purportedly asked, “Don’t you love me now?” and told her: “You’re just a crybaby, you’re just upset because I’m big.” She said that, back at her hotel, she took a long shower because she “felt like I couldn’t get clean.”
Unlike Patricia Bowman, who lost her date-rape case against William Kennedy Smith, Tyson’s accuser came across on the stand as the perfect victim. Now a scholarship student at a Roman Catholic college, she was barely 18 when she arrived at the beauty pageant. Growing up in Rhode Island, she apparently was the all-American girl: she played softball, ushered at her church and volunteered as a Big Sister. The court heard about her high-school days as a varsity cheerleader, class president and most-outstanding sophomore.
Judge Patricia Gifford, a former sex-crimes prosecutor, has ruled Tyson’s past difficulties with women inadmissible in court, but there have been plenty. He has been sued by several women who accused him of fondling them; a court awarded $100 damages in one such case. According to one contestant, a foulmouthed Tyson rubbed up against a number of the women during that fateful rehearsal-a story the prosecution might not want the jury to hear, since it could suggest that the alleged victim should have known better than to go out with him.
In his opening arguments, Fuller portrayed the complainant as an opportunist who became angry when she realized Tyson intended nothing more than a one-night stand. A senior partner in the high-powered Washington firm Williams and Connolly (and the man who won John Hinckley a not-guilty-by-insanity verdict), Fuller jabbed at her account, exposing inconsistencies. Did she sit on his bed or a chair by the door? Was Tyson’s bodyguard nearby or not?
Fairly bursting out of his well-tailored suits, Tyson looked calm and confident in court last week. He held hands with his elderly mother-substitute, Camille Ewald-while his loudmouthed promoter, Don King, was kept at discreet arm’s length. In conservative country like Indiana, jurors might be sympathetic to defense arguments that the young woman knew what she was in for. But the decision to put the boxer on the stand this week-always a risky gambit-suggests that Tyson’s team senses trouble ahead. The accuser’s story emerged from cross-examination. bruised but still standing and got a boost Saturday from Tyson’s Indianapolis chauffeur, Virginia Foster. Foster testified that Tyson had “begged” the young woman to join him that night, assuring her: “I just want to talk to you.” Afterward, Foster said, she appeared to be in “a state of shock.”
If Tyson is convicted, he could spend 63 years behind bars. Whatever the verdict, the recent bout of high-publicity date-rape cases may remind the physically stronger of the sexes that it is imprudent-and illegal-not to fight fair in the sexual arena.
