Darcel De Vlugt
DailyMail UK Reports
Her skin is so pale that she wears Factor 100 sun cream on even a dull summer day.
Yet, incredibly, 23-year-old Darcel de Vlugt was born black.
In a case of extreme rarity, the skin condition vitiligo has taken the pigment from her entire body.
Experts say they have never come across such a striking change and she says: 'I have a hard job convincing people that I was actually born with dark skin.'
Darcel's parents Peter and Charmaine, both from Trinidad, noticed white spots on her forearm and forehead when she was five.
Doctors diagnosed vitiligo, the same condition said to have affected Michael Jackson.
By the age of seven, white patches had appeared on her legs along with white spots on the rest of her body.
Darcel Age Seven
These gradually grew bigger until, when she was 17, the transformation was complete.
'My father worked for the United Nations and we travelled the world a lot with his job,' said Darcel, now a fashion designer in London.
'My family believe the stress of moving at such a young age brought on the condition. None of my direct family have ever suffered with the condition, although several relatives by marriage have had it in a less serious form than me.
‘When I was first diagnosed at the age of five, we didn’t take it too seriously. The doctor gave me medication to try and stop it spreading, and we thought that it wouldn’t get any worse.'
But by the age of seven, white patches had started to appear on Miss De Vlugt’s legs, and then by the time she was nine, it had spread up her arms too.
A year later it had started to spread up her neck and up to her nose.
She said: ‘We tried all the treatment we could to try and stop it spreading, but nothing seemed to work. The doctors told me to sunbathe for ten minutes each day which I did for a year, then I took medication for five years.
'At the age of 12 I tried UV laser treatment, but it didn't work and by then, 80 per cent of my body was white so I decided to leave it. There was nothing I could do.’
Vitiligo causes the immune system to attack the pigment cells which give skin its colour.
It affects one person in 100 of any age, race or colour although it is normally more noticeable in those with naturally dark skin. Darcel has a brother Dion, 29, who is unaffected.
Their father still works for the UN and is now based in Africa.
Because it has no melanin, Darcel's skin is vulnerable to sunburn, and she has to constantly wear suncream with a sun protection factor of 100.
She said: ‘I was very badly burnt at the age of nine, to the extent where my skin looked like it had been burnt in a fire.
‘I was covered in fluid filled blisters and it took weeks to heal. It was so painful.’
Darcel's Parents, Peter And Charmaine
Miss De Vlugt was given the option of bleaching the remainder of her skin as her body started to change colour, but she decided against it.
She said: ‘I believe that Michael Jackson had vitiligo and had patches of it on his body, then he bleached the rest so it had an even look.
‘But I didn’t want to bleach it as it would mean it was irreversible, and I had hoped that all the treatments I had been having would work instead.
‘But now my body is completely white all over, with not a patch of brown left, so I wouldn’t have needed to bleach any remaining skinanyway.’
Last month in the Mail, Luke Davis described how he had changed from black to white apart from a circular patch on his back.
But a spokesman for the Vitiligo Society said it was 'extremely unusual' for the entire body to change colour.
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New York Daily News Reports
Another gubernatorial sex scandal may be looming. Even as South Carolina's Mark Sanford waits to see whether his wife, Jenny, forgives his romp in the pampas, a New York call girl could plunge one of America's most prominent governors into a fresh hell.
In March, we told you about a high-end escort who claimed that former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer had gotten overly aggressive during some kinky role-play (a charge Spitzer's lawyer called "outrageous and defamatory").
Now the elegant blond courtesan, whom we'll continue to call "Annie," is talking about three "dates" she allegedly had with another state's chief executive, who we'll call Gov. X.
Though Annie's former boss, ex-madam Kristin Davis, corroborates that Gov. X was a client, his spokesman flatly denies that the married politician has ever hired hookers.
Still, it's hard not to be intrigued by Annie's detailed story. She contends that, in the spring of 2006, Davis' agency booked her for an out-of-state date with a man identified as "Michael."
"He picked me up in an Italian sports car," says Annie. "He was in his 30s, handsome enough to be an actor, an impeccable dresser. I wouldn't think he'd have a problem getting girls.
"We went to a restaurant where the governor was dining at another table with two or three other men. Michael said the governor was a client of his. He introduced me to him. I thought it was odd that he'd introduce someone he'd hired, but the governor was very gracious. It was a brief meeting. Later, Michael and I went to an apartment our agency kept. We had sex.
"A couple of days later, Michael booked another appointment. He was supposed to come to the same apartment. I buzzed him in. When I opened the door, it wasn't Michael. It was the governor. He was smiling. I knew what was happening. I was okay with it.
"He was a very standard client. He didn't take the full hour. There was no exchange of money. Michael handled the payment.
"I had two more dates with the governor. Never in public. Always for just an hour, around dinner time. He'd arrive at the apartment in a suit. I never had a problem with him, like I did with Spitzer. He was always nice. There wasn't a lot of conversation. It wasn't a girlfriend experience, but he was relaxed. He was very appreciative, like I was giving him a sort of affection he wasn't getting elsewhere. Later I found out he was married. His wife is quite prominent in her own right." (Annie and Davis say Gov. X is free to say he didn't pay for sex, since "Michael" took care of the bills.)
P.S. Among Davis' other alleged clients: Bernie Madoff. An assistant to the jailed Ponzi scammer has already told of his fondess for noontime massages. ABC News has now found the number for Davis' closed New York Body Miracle, once located near Madoff's offices, in his leather-bound phone book.
Davis, who writes in August's Penthouse about servicing the financial industry, also just found Madoff's unlisted number in her records. "He'd pay about $220 for a body rub," she'd tell us. "He wasn't an escort client."
In other words, unlike his victims, Madoff didn't lay out a lot of money to get screwed.
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Boston police officer Justin Barrett was suspended Wednesday, July 29, 2009, for using a racial slur to describe black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
NYDailyNews Reports
The Boston cop suspended for calling Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey" in a mass e-mail was turned in by fellow cops.
The revelation that Officer Justin Barrett's brothers in blue were also revolted by his hateful words came as the police commissioner tried to repair to reputation of Beantown's police department.
"This type of venomous rhetoric is severely damaging," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis declared Thursday.
"We will not allow the unacceptable actions of one member to define who we are."
Davis said he has apologized to Gates on behalf of the department and they are now checking whether Barrett had any run-ins with blacks while on the job.
Barrett is also not getting any love from the local police union, which has denounced his remarks as "offensive and hurtful."
"He's gone," Boston Mayor Tom Menino said of Barrett, who has already been suspended. "G-o-n-e. I don't care, it's like cancer. You don't keep those cancers around."
Barrett, 36, a cop for two years, has also been suspended by the National Guard, where he holds the rank of captain.
Earlier, Barrett insisted he was not a racist and "did not mean to offend anyone."
"The words were being used to characterize behavior, not describe anyone," Barrett told WCVB-TV.
Barrett conceded it was a "poor choice of words."
"I didn't mean it in a racist way," he added. "I treat everyone with dignity and respect."
Barrett said he was "just venting" about the July 16 arrest of Gates by a white Cambridge cop that became a national discussion about race when President Obama said the officers acted "stupidly."
"People are making it about race," said Barrett, who vowed to fight any attempt to fire him. "It is not about race."
But it may be about whether Barrett has any sense.
Barrett got into hot water after he fired off the note to his buddies on the force, in the Guard - and, inexplicably, The Boston Globe.
In the email, Barrett called the Globe story "jungle monkey gibberish" and wrote that Gates' "first priority should be to get off the phone and comply with police."
"For if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a ... jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance," Barrett wrote.
OC is pepper spray.
Barrett went on to question Gates' credentials, called him a "God damned fool," and twice challenged the paper to "ax" him what he thinks.
"I am not a racist, but I am prejudice [sic] towards people who are stupid and pretend to stand up and preach for something they claim is freedom," Barrett wrote.
Read more…
New York Daily News Reports
A made-for-tv gun battle erupted outside a Brooklyn baby shower for the wife of a star of the HBO crime series "The Wire" Sunday, killing one teen and wounding two men, cops said.
Gunmen unloaded nearly 50 bullets outside the party for the wife of actor Jamie Hector - who played violent druglord Marlo Stanfield on the hit series - then tried to finish off one of the wounded men outside a hospital.
"What a gun battle," a police source told the Daily News. "They have been watching too much TV."
Police and paramedics raced to E. 93rd St. in East Flatbush about 1:20 a.m.
Cops found evidence of a running gun battle with at least 46 shell casings dotting about half the block beginning at Avenue B.
Two guns were recovered, but no suspects were arrested after the violence that spilled out from the party.
Linton Williams, 17, of Brooklyn, died at the scene.
As the smoke cleared, someone helped 32-year-old Andrew Filson into a car and raced him to Downstate Medical Center.
When the shooting victim got out of the car at the hospital, another vehicle rolled up and someone inside started firing.
Police sources said Filson was hit at least once at the hospital.
Emergency workers put him into an ambulance and rushed him to Kings County Hospital, a trauma center where he was listed in critical condition yesterday.
Walter Parker, 22, was shot in the leg outside the party. He flagged down an ambulance and was taken to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was in stable condition.
Hector, a Brooklyn native who has also starred in TV shows "Heroes," "Jericho" and "The Game," was said to be at the baby shower for some time.
It was unclear whether the actor was still there when the bullets started flying - or why the gunmen targeted the three victims. Hector's spokesman didn't respond to calls for comment.
Margaret Joseph, who lives near where the shooting started, said she had gone to sleep about 1 a.m., but was awakened by the gunshots.
"I jump out of bed and I hear, 'Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,'" she said.
Another neighbor, who was also in bed when she heard the shots, said, "I was so scared. I rolled out of bed onto the ground to protect myself. Bullets penetrate windows, you know."
Lisa Bruce, 35, who lives on the corner of E. 94th St. and Avenue B, said she was watching a movie at 1:30 a.m. when she heard gunshots "exploding like firecrackers."
She peered out of her window and saw a bloodied victim hiding in the bushes.
"He was shouting, trying to tell somebody that he needed help," she said.
"Then the ambulance came, and the man limped out of the bushes and said, 'I'm shot, I'm shot,' and pointed to his leg."
"Then they took him away," she said.
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