Crystal Mangum is ready to apologize.
Nearly 20 years after the former exotic dancer accused Duke University lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans of rape in 2006, she publicly admitted, for the first time, that she lied about the allegations.
During an interview held from the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women—where she is currently serving an unrelated sentence for second-degree murder of her then-boyfriend in 2013, per NBC News—Mangum set the record straight.
“That night, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans, they took me into their home and they trusted,” she told Katerena DePasquale, host of the Let’s Talk With Kat podcast in the Dec. 11 episode. “The Bible says that you shouldn’t do harm to your neighbor that lives trustingly beside you, and they were my brothers and they trusted me that I wouldn’t betray their trust and I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t.”
She added, “And that was wrong, and I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me, and made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”
