Kingston NY high school on edge Charges that five boys raped a girl at Kingston High School Friday are sparking racial tensions in the city.
“This girl is just like Tawana Brawley, only she is white,” said the pastor of two of the boys, both black, who are charged with criminal sex acts against the 15-year-old girl. At least one of the other three boys is black.
Kingston police have charged the boys with sexually assaulting the girl in a boys restroom at the school about 3:30 p.m. Friday, after classes had ended. Two are charged with rape in addition to criminal sexual acts and one is charged with unlawful imprisonment. All of the charges are felonies.
In 1987, black teenager Tawana Brawley claimed six white law enforcement officers abducted and raped her in Wappingers Falls. The case touched off a national furor. A grand jury declared the accusations a hoax. In 2005, a black student’s attack on a white Kingston High School student triggered a white racist demonstration.
The pastor, a woman who declined to be identified, questioned the story of the 15-year-old accuser. “This had been going on all along. Then the parents get ahold of it and you cry something else,” she said.
Two of the boys charged at Kingston are Sharkey F. Daniel, 19, and his 17-year-old brother, Quami, both of 2204 Spring Brooks Village. They and their mother attend the New Jerusalem United Holy Church on Tremper Avenue.
The boys attend church several times a week, according to the pastor and Charlene LaDay-Hill, a minister, both of whom are black. Sharkey Daniel is a Sunday school teacher who won the Kingston district’s Martin Luther King academic award last year, the women said.
“With these boys, it did not happen,” said the pastor. “I know their mother. I saw them growing up. They are good kids. “¦ They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
LaDay-Hill and the pastor said the boys did not participate in any sexual acts with the girl. “I am not saying the incident didn’t happen,” LaDay-Hill said. “I am saying they didn’t do this. They didn’t need to force a girl against her will. It is not their way.”
A police report on the incident said Moore-Giles “did restrain a 15-year-old female by pushing her into a men’s bathroom and subsequently refusing to let her leave the bathroom. This 15-year-old was raped and sodomized while inside this bathroom.”
Additional police reports said Moore-Giles and Bryant engaged in both forcible oral and vaginal sexual intercourse with the victim, while Rogers and Quami Daniel engaged in oral sex. The report did not state the exact role Sharkey F. Daniel is alleged to have played in the incident.