Meredith Watson accused Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of raping her while they attended Duke in 2000.
She said Corey Maggette – who played at Duke in the 1998-99 season then went onto a 14-year NBA career with the Clippers, Warriors, Magic, Bucks, Bobcats and Pistons – also raped her.
Kevin Draper, Stephanie Saul and Marc Tracy of The New York Times:R. Stanton Jones, a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter in Washington who grew up with Ms. Watson in Baltimore, said she told him that she had been raped by Mr. Maggette. She told Mr. Jones about it while he and Ms. Watson were both home for the summer in 2001, he said.
“Meredith told me she had been raped twice at Duke,” Mr. Jones said. “And she told me that one of the men who raped her was the Duke basketball player Corey Maggette. That was a name I knew because I’m a basketball fan.”
Karen Kessler, a spokeswoman for Ms. Watson, provided The New York Times with a Facebook message exchange between Ms. Watson and a friend from March 2017. Ms. Kessler declined to identify the friend, whose name was blacked out in the messages, and The Times was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the messages.
In the messages, Ms. Watson expressed disgust at a newspaper article written about Mr. Fairfax, who had already announced his bid for lieutenant governor. After the friend asked Ms. Watson whether she had reported the rape, Ms. Watson responded: “You know I didn’t report it after how the university responded when I reported Corey Maggette.”
Ms. Kessler said that after being discouraged by the dean, Ms. Watson decided not to report her accusation to the police.
Unfortunately, it will be difficult to investigate these claims so long after the alleged incident. It is still important to try.
Hopefully, justice will prevail.
