Tawana Brawley

Tawana Brawley's parents want the State of New York to reopen the investigation into her alleged multiple rape by law enforcement officers. This is, as you will remember, a classic of the whole "race" issue in the US. Tawana Brawley went missing for four days and was then found, naked and smeared with feces. She claimed that six white law enforcement officials (Brawley herself is black) raped her.

Al Sharpton, no slouch at spotting a bandwagon, climbed aboard. Brawley's story was later examined by a special state grand jury and they ruled that it was made up, a fabrication: at least one of the officials supposedly involved won a libel case against Sharpton over some of this statements.

Twenty years after her allegations of a racially charged rape became a national flashpoint, Tawana Brawley's mother and stepfather want to reopen the case, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Glenda Brawley and Ralph King want to press Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to re-examine the November 1987 incident, which a state grand jury ultimately concluded was a hoax, the Daily News reported.

"New York State owes my daughter. They owe her the truth," said Glenda Brawley. She reiterated her stance that her daughter was indeed raped by a group of white men who smeared her with feces and scrawled racial epithets on her body.

Representatives for Spitzer and Cuomo did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages early Saturday.

Brawley was 15 when she went missing for four days from her home in Wappingers Falls, about 75 miles north of New York City. After being found, she made the shocking allegation that she had been abducted and raped by six white law enforcement officials.

The case quickly made headlines and drew the attention of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who became an outspoken advocate for the teen.

But a special state grand jury found evidence Brawley had fabricated her story. A former Dutchess County prosecutor who had been implicated in the case later sued Brawley, Sharpton and other Brawley advisers for defamation, winning a $345,000 judgment against the advisers and a $185,000 judgment against Brawley.

Tawana Brawley has long moved out of New York and changed her name. But it's her parents who want the whole case reopened, claiming that it was, in fact, all a cover up.

Glenda Brawley and her husband have not spoken publicly since a grand jury in 1988 decided there was no evidence their daughter was raped, yet they agreed to talk to The News for one reason: They are adamant that their daughter was raped and the men who did it were never punished.

"I could be looking at the television any day and they say the 'Tawana Brawley hoax,'" King said. "What hoax?"

"How could we make this up and take down the state of New York? We're just regular people," Glenda Brawley said to her husband. "We should be millionaires."

They say they decided to speak publicly for the first time in more than 15 years to beg Gov. Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to unseal the files and reopen the case.

Their words paint a story that is either one of the largest failures in the history of the justice system or a disturbing lie orchestrated years ago, still told with conviction 20 years later.

I understand the love of a parent for a child, but please people, you're deluded. There was no rape.

And a little background on Al Sharpton.