“How can any type of commercial advertiser be comfortable with having Al Sharpton as a spokesperson?”
Steven Pagones is a former Assistant District Attorney in the State of New York. He became the victim of Al Sharpton’s defamatory smear campaign to label him a rapist of 15-year-old black girl Tawana Brawley in 1987. Now he speaks out at Truth Revolt. To help stop advertiser support for Sharpton, sign our petition:
In November of 1987, 15-year-old African-American girl Tawana Brawley went missing. When she was found, it is alleged that she began telling people that she had been approached, kidnapped, raped, sodomized, and her body scrawled on with human feces by individuals whom she supposedly described as resembling white police officers. Law enforcement officials began working with her, but she soon enlisted the efforts of attorneys Alton Maddox, Vernon Mason, and a then-obscure supposed civil rights leader named Al Sharpton.
Soon thereafter, all cooperation between the Brawley camp and law enforcement was cut off.
I remember very clearly the day I was first accused of being involved in the kidnaping and rape of Tawana Brawley. I was preparing to attend a Christening on a Sunday when my phone rang. I picked up the phone, and the person asked if I was Steve Pagones; it was a media member inquiring about team Brawley’s allegations about me. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he dropped the bombshell: the Brawley team had said I was responsible for raping Brawley. I stammered, disbelieving, “That’s absurd. There’s not a shred of truth to it.” For the next 24 hours, my phone didn’t stop ringing. I was on the front page of every major newspaper in the state, and many across the country. It was simply unbelievable that the allegations had been made – and that the Brawley team made them without any evidence or support whatsoever. As soon as his charges hit the media, I had to hire around-the-clock security. I received death threats on the phone, in the mail. I had to hire armed guards for my family, for my property. My whole life was turned upside down.
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