DATE: Tuesday, November 11, 1997            TAG: 9711110222

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Update 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: NEW YORK                          LENGTH:   64 lines

LAWSUIT AGAINST BRAWLEY BACKERS GOING TO COURT

Ten years ago, Tawana Brawley, a black New York teen-ager, claimed she had been abducted and raped by a gang of white law enforcers. Her story was later declared a hoax.

A decade ago, the teen-age girl stood before cheering congregations, sported Mike Tyson's Rolex on her wrist, rubbed elbows with Don King and Bill Cosby.

She was Tawana Brawley - a cause, a poster child for racism, a black high school student who swore she had been abducted and raped by a gang of white law enforcers.

Then, in 1988, a grand jury declared her story a hoax. Attention quickly dwindled. And Tawana Brawley faded into rumor: Did she convert to Islam? Take a nursing job? Move to Virginia?

Next week, the Brawley case comes out of the shadows. A $165 million defamation suit, filed by a man cleared in the case, goes to trial.

Brawley has already lost. Her refusal to answer repeated subpoenas led to a 1991 default judgment for Steven Pagones, the former assistant district attorney who was implicated by the girl and her three advisers.

Those advisers are now the accused. The Rev. Al Sharpton, C. Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox will be reunited at the defense table. The trio, on 33 separate occasions before a potential audience of millions, identified Pagones as a Brawley rapist.

The trio never provided any evidence, but that didn't stop the bombastic Sharpton - recently reinvented as a Democratic mayoral candidate - from inviting Pagones' lawsuit.

``If we're lying, sue us,'' the pompadoured preacher challenged nine years ago. ``Sue us right now.''

Pagones did just that on Halloween 1988, detailing the emotional and physical toll that the unproven allegations took on him: insomnia, stomach ailments, anxiety attacks. After years of legal wrangling, the case finally has a starting date.

Both sides say they are eager to go to court. Pagones - now a 36-year-old assistant state attorney general - says he hopes to clear his name, for his own sake and the sake of his young daughter. The advisers, who kept Brawley from cooperating with authorities, will finally get a chance to present their ``evidence,'' although it's not clear if they'll seize the opportunity.

``I am looking forward to dealing with it, closing the books and moving on,'' says Sharpton, whose surprisingly successful political career is still dogged by the Brawley episode.

Almost from the beginning, the conduct of Brawley's advisers shared the spotlight with the teen-ager's horrendous story.

The 15-year-old girl, her body smeared with feces and scrawled in charcoal with racial slurs, was found in Wappingers Falls on Nov. 28, 1987. She had been missing for four days.

Asked what happened, the dazed teen wrote two words on a sheet of paper: ``White cop.'' Sharpton, Mason and Maddox quickly seized on the case.

Pagones, in an unusual move, waived immunity to testify before a grand jury empaneled to investigate Brawley's claim. Thirteen alibi witnesses testified on his behalf. There was no forensic evidence against Pagones, no eyewitnesses. Brawley refused to testify.

In its 170-page report, the panel denounced the case as a hoax and specifically exonerated Pagones. ILLUSTRATION: Tawana Brawley

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