Pa woman cooks up another 'Blame the Black man' hoax

Move over Charles Stuart and Susan Smith. Bonnie Sweeten of suburban Philadelphia has now qualified to be inducted into the Hall of Shame that bestows special recognition upon Whites who have committed crimes and then falsely blamed a Black man.Last week, Sweeten and her 9-year-old daughter, Julia, were the subject of a national missing persons search. The drama began when Sweeten made a frantic call to 911 at 1:45 on Tuesday afternoon saying a fender-bender accident involving her SUV and a car; Black men forced her and her daughter into the trunk of their car and sped off. She said the abduction took place on a street in Upper Southhampton Township in Bucks County.

Aided by the FBI, police in the region conducted a massive manhunt and issued an Amber Alert for Julia Rakoczy, Sweeten's daughter from a previous marriage. But the lie began to unravel piece by piece. First, Sweeten's SUV was not found near the intersection where she claimed the abduction took place. Instead, it was recovered approximately 12 hours later in downtown Philadelphia.

A parking ticket had been placed on the windshield of the SUV about a half hour after Sweeten placed the frantic call. Investigators doubted Black men or anyone else could have made the 25-mile trip from Upper Southampton in the middle of the day within 30 minutes.

Investigators also discovered a videotape of Sweeten and her daughter passing through a security-screening device at the Philadelphia International Airport. Retracing Sweeten's steps, authorities learned that she had purchased two one-way tickets to Orlando, Fla. After withdrawing $12,000 from various accounts in days leading up to her departure, she borrowed a co-worker's license - purportedly in order to deal with a pension matter - and used the license to buy the tickets to Florida.

The two were traced to Disneyworld and apprehended as they were returning to the Grand Floridian resort. Attorney Debbie Calitz, Sweeten's former employer, told the Philadelphia Daily News that Sweeten "stole money from my law practice," which may account for her decision to flee. Sweeten was charged with identity theft and making a false police report.

When I first heard of the hoax, I thought back to a story Lee Daniels, a former reporter for the New York Times, wrote for me in 1995 when I was editor of Emerge magazine. The headline was, "The American Way: Blame a Black Man." Daniels wrote, "Susan Smith knew the powerful grip the image of the dangerous Black man has on White Americans' psyche. And who can doubt it? In her descent into pathological desperation, that knowledge became for her, as it had for Charles Stuart, the crucial element in calculating that she could commit the gruesome crime and get away with it."

Smith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering her two sons, Michael, 3, and Alexander, four months old, in Union, S.C. She told police in 1994 that an armed Black man had hijacked her car at a stoplight and was forced to leave her kids behind. For nine days, she stood by her story, making tearful televised appeals for the return of her children. She eventually confessed to watching her car roll into a lake after putting the car in drive, and hopping out after releasing the hand brake. Her two sons were in the back seats.

In 1989, Charles Stuart, the manager of an upscale fur store in Boston shot his pregnant wife and himself, apparently as part of an insurance scheme. After going to childbirth classes, Stuart said a Black gunman forced his way into their car at a stoplight and shot him in the stomach and his wife, Carol, in the head. Both the wife and baby died. The break in the case came when Stuart's brother, Matthew, went to police and admitted that he had gone to the murder scene, by prearrangement with his brother, to remove his sister-in-law's jewelry, purse and the gun. The next day, Charles Stuart committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Boston Harbor. Matthew Stuart was sentenced to three to five years in prison for concealing evidence.

During last year's presidential campaign, Ashley Todd, a campaign worker for John McCain, claimed that she was robbed at knifepoint on October 22 by a "six-foot four African American" at an ATM in Pittsburgh. She said the alleged robber saw a McCain sticker on her car and became enraged, cutting a backward "B" (for Barack) into her cheek. She later admitted lying. Todd was enrolled in a first-time offender's program and can have her record expunged upon successful completion of probation.

Whether these three wrongdoers or Jennifer Wilbanks - the "Runaway Bride" who claimed a Latino man and a White woman abducted and sexually assaulted her- sick Whites are not so sick that they fail to realize that they can play into America's stereotype of Black males as criminals. That stereotype was present before and it persists even as an African-American male sits in the White House.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.