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The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case and the Lives It Shattered
Threshold Editions
June 2007
On Sale: June 12, 2007
336 pages ISBN: 1416551468 EAN: 9781416551461 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Mike Pressler walked into the bottomfloor meeting room of the
Murray Building and, as he had done hundreds of times over a
sixteen-year career at Duke University, prepared to address
his men's
lacrosse team. Forty-six players sat in theater-style
chairs, all eyes
riveted forward.
It was 4:35 P.M. on Wednesday, April 5, 2006. The program's
darkest
hour had arrived in an unexpected and explosive
announcement.
Pressler, a three-time ACC Coach of the Year, informed his
team that
its season was canceled and he had "resigned," effective
immediately.
While his words reverberated off the walls, hysteria
erupted. Players
cried, confused over a course of events that had spun wildly
out of
control. What began as an off-campus team party with two hired
strippers had accelerated into a rape investigation -- one
that exposed
prosecutorial misconduct, shoddy police work, an
administration's rush
to judgment, and the media's disregard for the facts --
dividing both a
prestigious university and the city of Durham.
Wiping away tears, Pressler demonstrated the steely resolve
that helped
him win more than two hundred games. For the next thirty
minutes,
Pressler put his personal situation aside and encouraged his
players to
stick together. He also made a bold promise: "One day, we
will get a
chance to tell the world the truth. One day."
This is that day.
Pressler, who has not done an interview since the saga
began, has
handed his private diary from those three weeks to New York
Times
bestselling author Don Yaeger, exposing vivid details,
including the
day Pressler was fired, when the coach asked Athletic
Director Joe
Alleva why the school "wasn't willing to wait for the truth"
to come
out. "It's not about the truth anymore," Alleva said to the
coach in a
signature moment that said it all. In addition to Pressler,
Yaeger
interviewed more than seventyfive key figures intimately
involved in
the case. The result is a tale that defies logic.
"It is tough to be one of fifty people who believed a story
when fifty
million people believed something else," Pressler said.
"This wasn't
about the truth to many of the others involved. My story is
all about
the truth."
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