Duke victim receives medal for “courage, nobility, integrity and charity”

[cavalier302]

<p>

Cleared ex-Duke lacrosse player gets medal</p>

<p>Former sexual assault suspect Seligmann gets same honor Wiesel once got</p>

<p>Former Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann was cleared of sexual assault charges on April 11.</p>

<p>Updated: 3:07 p.m. ET April 26, 2007
MORRIS TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Less than two weeks after sexual offense charges were dropped against him and two fellow Duke lacrosse teammates, Reade Seligmann received a medal from the exclusive prep school where he graduated in 2004.</p>

<p>Seligmann was presented with the Delbarton Medal, the highest honor from the all-boys Delbarton School.</p>

<p>The school’s headmaster, the Rev. Luke L. Travers, praised Seligmann for demonstrating “courage, nobility, integrity and charity” during the year since the charges were brought.</p>

<p>“You gave us a model of how to handle the pressures that we all experience,” Travers said, according to the school’s Web site.</p>

<p>Travers declined to comment Thursday, school spokeswoman Jessica Fiddes said.</p>

<p>Fiddes said the Delbarton Medal is given to several graduating seniors at each year, but occasionally it is given to others, including school visitors such as Nobel peace prize winner Elie Wiesel.</p>

<p>“In Reade’s case, the medal was given to affirm the character that Reade displayed during the ordeal of the past year,” she said. The medal was presented on Tuesday.</p>

<p>Seligmann, 21, of Essex Fells, and two teammates were cleared April 11 of charges alleging they raped a stripper at an off-campus lacrosse party. The charges were dropped by North Carolina’s attorney general, who said the three men were innocent and were victims of a local prosecutor’s “overreaching” because no attack happened.</p>

<p>Seligmann did not return to Duke after the charges and has been volunteering as an assistant lacrosse coach at Delbarton.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18333387/?GT1=9246[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18333387/?GT1=9246&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[willow_41z]

<p>Wait, didn’t the whole situation come up because drunk underage lacrosse players hired a stripper? And now they are giving one of them the same award for integrity and nobility as they gave Elie Wiesel?</p>

<p>That doesn’t make sense.</p>

[lspf72]

<p>Seems like a bit much. It must have been an extremely difficult situation, but at the same time… what did he do that was so extraordinary? Did he behave in a much better or different way than an “average” person would have?</p>

[ninja.of.love]

<p>“pressures…we all experience”</p>

<p>Is this prep-school a feeder for the legal system or just the world of strippers and drinking?</p>

[NJres]

<p>no, really, you shouldn’t have…</p>

[chocoholic]

<p>Lovely…</p>