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4.2.12
WC: 191694

Our investigation also uncovered that Desiree’s father had a history of violence toward her.
According to a news report, Desiree’s mother had her father arrested and charged with assault
and battery against Desiree. “In her account,” reported in the media, “Desiree alleged to the
police that her father ‘hit me and pushed my head under the sink…He continued slamming my
head into the wall and the floor. I freed myself and reached for a knife to protect myself.’” A
sworn statement by the mother reportedly said that her husband “flew off the handle” when
Desiree told him “she had lost her virginity.”

In order to avoid his fury once again, this time for having consensual sex with Tyson, she
apparently decided to cry rape once again. At first, she said that he had "tried" to rape her. She
initially denied having sex with Tyson. Then she said they had sex "on the floor." She told the
female chaplain at the hospital that there had been some "participation" and consensual physical
involvement on her part, before he forced her. Finally, she settled on the account she gave at
trial: that he had raped her on the bed with no prior consensual involvement on her part.

No one except Tyson and Washington knows exactly what went on behind the closed doors of his
hotel room. There was no videotape. Nor was there any physical evidence to corroborate
Washington’s unlikely story. Indeed, the available physical evidence completely undercuts her
story. She was wearing a sequin-studded outfit, which she claims Tyson “yanked” off her as he
“slammed [her] down on the bed.” If that had happened, there would have been sequins all over
the hotel room. Indeed, at the trial, when the dress was gingerly introduced into evidence,
sequins fell off in the courtroom. But only one sequin was found in Tyson’s hotel room after the
allegedly forcible rape.

Nor were there any bruises—external or internal—found on Ms. Washington that were consistent
with her account of how Tyson had “forced” her to have sex. She testified that Tyson “slammed
[her] down on the bed,” got on top of her, held her down with his forearm across the chest, and
forced himself inside her.

Had the 230-pound, muscular Tyson done that to the 105-pound, slight Washington, there would
have been bruises, welts, contusions, and even broken ribs. Yet there was not even the slightest
bruise on Washington’s body when she went to the hospital just hours after the sexual encounter.
The doctors found only two tiny microscopic abrasions, which, according to leading experts, are
perfectly consistent with consensual sex—especially if the man has a larger-than-average penis or
the woman a smaller-than-average vagina. Such tiny abrasions are also more likely when two
people have consensual sex with each other for the first time and are not used to one another’s
sexual movements and desires. Mike Tyson’s account of what occurred, on the other hand, was
entirely consistent with the physical evidence. And it would have been corroborated had the
judge not excluded the three objective eye witnesses who saw them necking and kissing just
moments before they went to his hotel room.

Despite the absence of physical evidence to corroborate Desiree Washington's story, the jury
eventually believed her because there was no compelling reason to disbelieve the testimony of a
young, religious, sexually inexperienced "girl" who had no possible motive to put herself through
the agony of a rape trial. But it turns out that there were very good reasons for not believing her.

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