A 23-year-old Landon School alumnus from Bethesda on Monday became the latest person to be charged in the Duke University rape case.
David Evans, who graduated Sunday from Duke University and was captain of its now-notorious lacrosse team, was indicted on charges that he raped a 27-year-old exotic dancer at a home where Evans lived. Two of Evans’ teammates, sophomores Reade Seligmann, 20, of New Jersey, and Collin Finnerty 19, of New York, already have been indicted.
The dancer is a student at North Carolina Central University. She told police she was attacked at a riotous party at the home March 13. She is black and says she is trying to pay her way through school; the three defendants are white and wealthy.
With its race and class dimensions, the case has become something of a Rorschach test on national talk shows and in the blogosphere. Some critics say Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong boosted his election campaign by demonizing the lacrosse players; others say the players are louts who’ve been protected by their families’ wealth.
Evans graduated in 2002 from Landon, an all-boys academy in Bethesda. Officials at Landon, who have been following the case, said they were surprised by the charges.
“David was an outstanding member of our school community,” Headmaster David Armstrong said in a statement. “The allegations coming from Durham today are inconsistent with the character of the young man who attended our school.”
Evans’ father is a lawyer. His mother, Rae Forker Evans, is a community activist and member of the Washington elite. A former Nixon White House intern, she is a member of the board of directors of the Ladies Professional Golf Association and has worked on behalf of Green Door, a Washington-based organization that assists people with mental illness.
Her lobby shop, Evans Capitol Group, has represented clients including Hallmark, the Newspaper Association of America and the Girl Scouts, according to the Senate Office of Public Records. She was not in her office Monday and did not return a phone message.
Evans addressed the media briefly outside the Durham County Jail. He said the charges were “fantastic lies” and said he looked “forward to watching them unravel.” – The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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