The 25-year-old woman, whose claims of being kidnapped and raped by six white men in 1987 were later deemed a hoax by a grand jury, did not waver from her original story. "If I did that, it would be like saying it didn't happen. And it did," Brawley said. "For 10 years, they've been lying to you. . . . You should know that the hoax was pulled on you."
The audience packed into Bethany Baptist Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, reacted with thunderous applause. Former Dutchess County Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who's now suing Brawley's three former advisers for defamation, had a different response. "She stood there for 10 or 15 minutes and said a lot about nothing," said Pagones when reached at his Fishkill home. "She didn't give any facts."
Brawley never mentioned Pagones specifically last night, but she referred to his offer earlier in the day to drop the judgment against her if she would tell her story under oath in the suit against her advisers. Pagones won a default judgment against Brawley in 1991 after she failed to answer repeated subpoenas. "A hundred-seventy million dollars, I think, and they would drop the suit against me. . . . They offered to drop the lawsuit against me if I spoke out against Alton," Brawley said, gesturing to disbarred attorney Alton Maddox. "That would never happen. There is not enough money on this planet."
Comment: Apparently, it's not the first time something like this has happened. On 26th of May, 2013 there was a fire in the same ammonia factory:
More interesting, however, is the fact that one of the largest ever industrial accidents in the U.S. happened at an ammonia facility on the 18th of April in West, Texas.