After 25 years, Tawana Brawley begins paying man she falsely accused of rape

A quarter-century after her name made national headlines and became infamous, Tawana Brawley is finally paying for making a false rape charge against a former New York prosecutor.

Paying $627 per month, to be exact.

The New York Post reports that last week a judge in Virginia, where Brawley now lives under various assumed names and works as a nurse, ordered $3,764.61 garnished from six months' worth of Brawley's wages and paid to Steven Pagones.

But that's far from the end of it, as the paper reports Brawley owes $431,000 more.

The payments are the latest chapter in a saga that began in November 1987, when Brawley, then 15 years old, was found in a trash bag with racial slurs written on her in feces. She told police that six white men had abducted, brutalized, and raped her for four days. Her handlers, including a relatively unknown minister named Al Sharpton, accused Pagones, then a prosecutor in Dutchess County, New York, of being one of Brawley's attackers. A grand jury concluded that Brawleys story was a hoax the following year.

In 1998 Pagones won a defamation suit from Sharpton and two of Brawley's other advisers, who were ordered to pay over $350,000 in damages. Brawley was ordered to pay $190,000 at 9 percent annual interest -- hence the $431,000 figure.

For his part, Pagones tells The Post that he'll forgive the rest of the debt if Brawley admits that she falsely accused him.

Click for the story from The New York Post.