US: Two students at an elite university in North Carolina have been arrested on charges of raping an exotic dancer in a case that has highlighted tensions over race, class and privilege in the US.
Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, both 20-year-old members of Duke University's lacrosse team, were led into Durham county jail yesterday morning after a grand jury charged them with rape and kidnap.
Both men deny any wrongdoing at a party last month when a 27-year-old African-American mother of two says she was hired as a stripper and raped by three members of the lacrosse team in a bathroom.
"We're surprised that anybody got indicted, quite frankly. The next jury will hear the entire story, which includes our evidence, and we're confident that these young men will be found to be innocent," Mr Finnerty's lawyer, Bill Cotter said.
The rape allegation has led to almost daily protests near the university, where annual fees for tuition and board are higher than the average annual family income in the local town of Durham, almost half the population of which is black.
Defence lawyers called on district attorney Mike Nifong to drop the case after DNA tests failed to link any member of the lacrosse team to the accuser and time-stamped photographs suggested the woman was injured before the alleged rape took place.
Mr Nifong says he has enough evidence to proceed and that a medical examination of the woman found injuries consistent with rape. The district attorney, who is seeking re-election, has rejected claims that his pursuit of the case is politically motivated.
"The reason that I took this case is because this case says something about Durham that I'm not going to let be said," he said.
The case has gripped America's imagination, partly because the accuser is a student at a mainly black college on the other side of Durham and the lacrosse players are white, former pupils of expensive schools in the north-east.
The woman claims one of the Duke students hired her and another dancer to perform on March 13th at a party in a house rented by the lacrosse team's co-captains. She says the two dancers left the party at one stage after one of the students threatened to sexually assault them with a broomstick.
They were persuaded to come back in, after which the woman says she was dragged into a room and raped for about 30 minutes.
A neighbour said he heard one student shout a racial insult at the two dancers as they drove away from the party, and it emerged that after the party one of the partygoers sent an e-mail to other members of the team saying he hoped they would hire more strippers so he could skin and kill them.
Media reports have focused on the accuser's criminal record and the fact that she served a jail term for stealing a taxi from a customer at the strip club where she worked. It has also emerged, however, that nearly a third of the lacrosse team have been cited for misdemeanours including drunk- driving and urinating in public.
Mr Finnerty was charged with assault in Washington last November after a man said that the Duke student and two friends had repeatedly punched him after he told them to stop calling him "gay and other derogatory names".