Duke Accuser In Prior Rape Claim

APRIL 28--A decade before accusing three Duke University lacrosse players of rape, a North Carolina woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a trio of men when she was a teenager. In 1996, the woman, now 27, told police that three attackers had assaulted her several years earlier, when she was 14. The woman's first rape claim was recorded in August 1996 by police in Creedmoor, N.C., though none of the men she identified as her assailants were ever charged. A copy of the Creedmoor Police Department report can be found below (the names of the accuser and her purported attackers have been redacted by cops). The woman told police that she was raped and beaten 'for a continual time' in a house in Creedmor, which is about 15 miles outside Durham, where the Duke attack allegedly occurred. The latter assault came after the accuser, an exotic dancer who attends North Carolina Central University, stripped at a March off-campus party attended by most of Duke's lacrosse team. Two players, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, have been indicted for rape and investigators are seeking to identify a third alleged attacker. (2 pages)