Sex and Lies

[TheEpitome1920]

Kobe Bryant's accuser admits she lied to investigators
Date: Tuesday, October 12, 2004
By: Associated Press

EAGLE, United States - The woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape admitted to investigators that she lied to police about details of what followed her sexual encounter with the NBA star, documents revealed.

But in a letter to investigators written more than a year after she first accused Bryant, she apologized and said she lied because she feared police would not believe her claim.

The stunning revelation emerged in a letter that was among 625 pages of previously-secret prosecution documents released following last month's dramatic collapse of the famed basketballer's criminal trial after the accuser refused to testify against him.

In a handwritten letter dated one year and a day after the alleged attack on June 30, 2003, the accuser admitted that she altered two details of what happened after sex with Bryant in her statement to police.

The 20-year-old claimed she was raped by the Los Angeles Lakers star in his hotel room in the mountain hamlet of Edwards in the western US state of Colorado, while Bryant maintains that the sex was consensual.

She conceded that she had originally told Eagle County Sheriff's Detective Doug Winters that Bryant "made me stay in the room and wash my face" after their sexual encounter.
But in her letter, addressed to district attorney investigator Gerry Sandberg, she admitted: "While I was held against my will in that room, I was not forced to wash my face. I did not wash my face."

She added: "I made the mistake of telling Detective Winters about the bathroom, but as I continued with my statement I felt what was done to me was horrific enough, and that is the only thing I exaggerated. Again, I am very sorry."

The woman also admitted that she lied when she told investigators that she was late for work as a concierge at the hotel where Bryant was staying on the day of the alleged rape because of car trouble.

"When I called in late to work that day that was the reason I gave my boss for being late," according to the letter. "In all reality, I simply overslept."

In the letter, dated one month before the case against Bryant was withdrawn, the woman says the misrepresentations "have been weighing heavily on my conscience."

While neither of the untruths go to the heart of the rape allegation, legal experts said that they could have damaged the woman's credibility and the prosecution case against Bryant if the details had emerged before the jury at trial.

Prosecutors dropped their case against the National Basketball Association (NBA) icon on September 1 after she decided on the eve of the trial that she no longer wanted to testify against him.

Legal experts said that the prosecution case had been mortally wounded by prosecution claims in pre-trial hearings that forensic evidence indicated that the woman had sex with other men in the 72 hours around the time of her sex with Bryant.

The documents released on Friday also recount an interview with the alleged victim's mother in which she tells how her daughter announced she had been raped the day after the incident allegedly took place.

The mother said her daughter appeared "distraught" when she returned home from work at the hotel, but only made the rape allegation to her the following day.

"Mom," she reportedly told her mother as she lay in her bed where she had apparently been weeping. "I was raped last night."

"Who was it?" the mother asked, according to the prosecution documents. "Kobe Bryant," the accuser said.

"Honestly, I have never doubted her from the moment she told me," the mother said.

The accuser has filed a civil suit against Bryant seeking damages from him in a court where the standard of proof is lower than in criminal proceedings.