Posted by ChasinDatPaper on September 18, 2009 at 12:00am
Kevin Tavares, second from left, Stalin Felipe, center, and Rondell Bedward, right, talk to a reporter, left, after they were released from the Nassau County Jail in East Meadow, N.Y.
NY Daily News Reports
One of the five men falsely accused of gang-raping a Hofstra University student said Thursday he and his friends feared they would be attacked in jail.
"In life and in jail, rapers and molesters are seen as the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low," said 20-year-old Kevin Taveras. "We were scared."
Dressed in sweats and weary after his ordeal, Taveras said he doesn't even know the name of his accuser and hopes cops "file an investigation of that girl."
Kevin Tavares
"I hope that other people see the truth that she lied, that we never lied," he said. "We could have all done long bids [in prison]. It could have cost us 25 years."
Taveras' dad said what the 18-year-old Hofstra freshman did with her bogus charge will haunt his son forever.
"This is not over," Ramiro Taveras, 44, said outside his Brentwood, L.I., home. "What's going to happen when somebody Googles his name?"
Taveras spoke out a day after the woman recanted her story that five men raped her in a Hofstra dormitory bathroom early Sunday morning.
Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said she changed her story after being shown cell-phone video footage of the sexual encounter.
"Her actions and her demeanor depict a very troubled young woman in need of some help," said Rice, declining to identify her.
"It's fair to say that at some point she felt she had to tell the truth and I am glad that she did."
Rice left open the possibility she could be charged with a crime. "It is against the law to tell the police that a crime happened when a crime did not happen," she said.
While Rice declined to say who shot the footage, Taveras' lawyer said it was filmed by one of the participants and that "it looks more like a porn movie."
"It showed just the opposite of what the allegations were," said lawyer Victor Daly-Rivera. "There was no tying up, there was no bruising, there was no screaming."
Danmell Ndonye has been suspended from school pending a disciplinary hearing, said Hofstra spokeswoman Melissa Connolly. Asked point blank if he had sex with the girl, Taveras told the News, "I don't want to talk about what happened." But he said he learned a lesson.
"If you're at college and you're going to a party, do what your parents says - don't get caught up in things like this," he said.
Taveras said he and Stalin Felipe, 19, drove out Saturday with their buddies to see Rondell Bedward, a 21-year-old Hofstra student from the Bronx, and to attend a party at a campus nightclub.
The woman told cops later Sunday that one of them lured her out of the club by swiping her cell phone on the dance floor.
Taveras, Felipe, Bedward and another buddy were quickly rounded up and charged with first-degree rape. Cops were looking for the fifth man when the woman changed her story.
Behind bars, Taveras said, he stayed close to Felipe, who is his step-brother and lives in the Bronx. He said he was sprung Wednesday night and driven home by his dad.
Taveras said now he has to exlain to his girlfriend what really happened.
"I put her through hell," he said. "It's going to be hard to get through this."
Felipe said he believes the accuser lied because she "felt guilty and ashamed of herself."
"I did not touch her at all," Felipe added. "I know how to treat women."
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