Abram Elam aiming for fresh start

Sunday, November 25, 2007
Abram Elam aiming for fresh start

BY RICH CIMINI
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Sunday, November 25th 2007, 4:00 AM
Martinez/Getty

Abram Elam makes a tackle in the Jets' Thanksgiving Day loss. Elam has come a long way to make it to the NFL.
Elam is helped out of courtroom by his parents Addie Lewis (l.) and Rev. Donald C. Elam after hearing jury find him guilty of sexual battery in August of 2003. Photo courtesy of South Bend Tribune

Elam is helped out of courtroom by his parents Addie Lewis (l.) and Rev. Donald C. Elam after hearing jury find him guilty of sexual battery in August of 2003.
Says Elam: 'I learned to live and learned from my mistakes, and allowed people to get to know me and the person I am. Once they give me a chance, they'll see that I'm a good guy.' Weissman for News

Says Elam: 'I learned to live and learned from my mistakes, and allowed people to get to know me and the person I am. Once they give me a chance, they'll see that I'm a good guy.'

On Oct. 20, the phone rings in Sam Budnyk's home in Boca Raton, Fla. One of his former high school players, Abram Elam, is calling from a hotel in Cincinnati, where the Jets are staying on the eve of facing the Bengals.

"Guess what, Coach?" the excited voice says. "I'm starting."

The old coach turns to mush. He puts down the phone, his eyes welling with tears. In an instant, images flicker in his mind as he retraces Elam's difficult journey from too-good-to-be-true schoolboy star to fallen hero to starting NFL safety.

Budnyk sees the eager kid who would show up every day at 6:45 a.m. for double sessions - an hour before his teammates. He sees the little boy who sat in the school chaplain's office, sobbing uncontrollably after his 12 year-old-sister was shot dead. He sees the young man who went off to Notre Dame, so proud, so full of promise, only to return two years later, shamed.

Now he hears Elam's voice on the line, and Budnyk chokes up. His wife, nearby, sees him and fears someone has died. To him, it's just the opposite. He considers this a rebirth.

"I'm so proud of him," Budnyk says now.

"This," Elam tells reporters after his first pro start, "is a dream come true."

For a 26-year-old woman in Boston, those words - dream come true - revive dormant emotions. His dream is her nightmare.

* * *

This is a story that will make you stand up and cheer or slam your fist into a table.

Elam, who rose above a crime-ravaged neighborhood in Riviera Beach, Fla., and endured family tragedies and refused to surrender when his career seemed over, has emerged as a solid starter for the Jets. He's coming off the best game of career, a seven tackle performance on Thanksgiving against the Cowboys, his former team.

This should be a feel-good story, but there's another side to it.

In April 2002, a Notre Dame junior named Lindsay Charles accused three football players of raping her at an off-campus house. A fourth, Elam, wasn't charged with rape, but was in the bedroom. Elam fondled her and wound up being convicted of sexual battery, a felony. The others walked away, no convictions.

Charles walked away a psychological mess, friends say, so afraid of retribution in the football-obsessed Notre Dame community that she legally changed her last name while finishing her undergraduate work. (She has since returned to her real name.) Years later, when Elam resurfaced, so did she, waging a smear campaign against him wherever he showed up on the football map.

"I feel sick to my stomach whenever I think about Abram Elam," Charles writes in an E-mail to the Daily News. "I am disappointed that an NFL team would sign a convicted sex offender, when there must be other talented men who have not committed heinous crimes. He belongs in a jail cell, not on the gridiron."

Elam is "a paper tiger," says Kathy Redmond, founder of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes. She acknowledges that Elam "inflicted the least amount of damage" of the four, but she says his most egregious crime was not trying to stop the alleged rape and refusing to testify against the others.

"He could've made a difference if he had shown some courage, telling the whole story the way it really happened without having to feel like he ratted out his boys," says Redmond, who has worked closely with Charles since the incident.
With a hint of hopefulness in her voice, she adds, "There's no statute of limitations on him doing the right thing."

 

* * *

There are two versions of what happened that fateful night, March 28, 2002. At Elam's trial, which made big headlines in the staid Midwest, the two sides portrayed the incident as being either gang rape or consensual group sex.

According to various accounts, including the police report, Elam went out that night to a local bar. Afterward, he and his roommate, Lorenzo Crawford, went to the home of Justin Smith, who had just completed his career at Notre Dame. Smith was watching a movie ("Cruel Intentions") with Charles, a former team manager. Another player, Donald Dykes, was present with another woman.

Charles and Smith ended up in his bedroom. Elam followed them upstairs. According to her testimony, Elam refused to leave and forced his fingers inside her. She said Smith raped her. By now, Crawford had joined in. Elam stripped to his shorts and fondled her breasts. He left the room. Dykes entered.

Five days later, Charles reported the attack. All four men were expelled from school. Elam was the first to stand trial, where he was found not guilty of the most serious charges, conspiracy to commit rape and criminal deviate conduct. But the sexual-battery charge stuck.

Dykes was acquitted of all charges. Smith's and Crawford's case never got to trial; their charges were dropped. Despite a tearful plea from Charles, who asked the judge to impose jail time, Elam received two years' probation and community service. No prison.

"There is no just punishment for rape," Charles writes, "but certainly his sentence and its consequences do not even come close to being fair."

At the time, Elam claimed the sex was consensual, telling the court, "No way that night (she) was forced to do anything against her will … I don't approve of the conduct that night. It's morally incorrect. I apologize to my parents. I'm embarrassed for all I lost."

One day recently, Elam is sitting in an office at the Jets' facility, revisiting the dark chapter.

"I apologized for putting myself in that situation," he says. "I learned to live and learned from my mistakes, and allowed people to get to know me and the person I am. Once they give me a chance, they'll see that I'm a good guy."

Those close to Elam believe he got a raw deal, questioning why the defendant facing lesser charges was convicted while the alleged rapists walked free. Elam rejected a plea arrangement that would've resulted in all charges against him being dropped if he testified that the three others committed rape.

"He was steadfast in saying he was in no way guilty, and that he wasn't going to make up stories about the other three," Elam's South Bend-based attorney, Mark Lenyo, says now.

Lenyo believes there were inconsistencies in Charles' case that raised questions about her credibility, noting she spent the night at the house, slept in the same bed as Smith and removed a tampon before the incident.

Redmond's response: "This was four guys. This was blood on the sheets. This was many different orifices being raped. She went through a brutal, brutal attack."

Booted from Notre Dame, Elam returned to Riviera Beach. He left a golden boy and came back a sex offender. No big-time schools wanted him, so he took classes at the local community college, worked as a low-level assistant at a pediatric dentist's office and trained with a track coach, all the while dreaming of another shot in football.

Elam wanted to escape Riviera Beach, which has one of the highest crime rates in Florida. The streets were taking his family, one by one.

When Abram was 6, his half-brother, Donald Runner, was killed in a drive-by shooting in a nearby park. Two years later, Elam's older brother, Donald Elam Jr., only 14, was charged with murdering a drug dealer. He was acquitted, but he ended up in jail on an unrelated charge. He was released just two weeks ago after an eight-year sentence.

The low point came when Elam's sister, Christina, only 12, was fatally shot by the older brother of a classmate with whom she had been arguing. It happened in the same park. Abram, a high school junior, ran to the park, past the police cars, through the police tape and cradled her blood-soaked body. She died at the hospital.

"That's a lot of tragedy in one lifetime," Budnyk says.

"I grew up in a rough environment, but I've managed to stay focused," says Elam, who used to pray for his slain sister at the Notre Dame chapel. "I knew what I wanted in life and pursued my dream."

After sitting out two seasons, Elam surfaced at Kent State. Then-coach Dean Pees, now the Patriots' defensive coordinator, took a lot of heat for offering him a scholarship. Before making the decision, Pees consulted with his wife and five daughters, and they agreed that Elam deserved a second chance. Pees also received letters of recommendation from civic leaders in Riviera Beach.

Elam played one season at Kent State and, not surprisingly, he was ignored in the 2005 draft. He tried to catch on as a free agent, but continued to run into a persistent obstacle - Charles.

She made it her business to sabotage his fledgling career, calling ahead to prospective teams and the local papers to tell the story of how Elam ruined her life. The Dolphins gave him a look, but they cut him soon after the papers picked up on her story.

"I think she enjoys a lot of attention," Lenyo says.

Former Cowboys coach Bill Parcells signed Elam on a recommendation from Tucker Frederickson, the old Giant. A Jupiter, Fla., resident with a son who played at Kent State, Frederickson had followed Elam's career. Parcells took a chance last season and Elam became "one of my best guys" on special teams.

"This kid wants to make something of himself," Parcells says. "He's a high-class kid. I like this kid a lot - a lot."

Elam, one of the Cowboys' final cuts this preseason, landed with the Jets, who received a glowing report from Parcells. The Jets say they investigated Elam's background and found him to be a high-character individual, sexual battery notwithstanding.

* * *

Today, Charles is studying law at Boston College, where she hopes to graduate in 2009. She took a job after Notre Dame, but left because of a "hostile work environment" she encountered during the Kobe Bryant scandal. After nine months of unemployment, she worked at Planned Parenthood in Chicago, also volunteering with various agencies to assist rape victims. She has filed a civil suit against Elam.

"I am no longer the person I was before being raped," she writes. "In some ways, I have changed for the better. I am more confident in myself, much more assertive, and more empathetic toward others. But I was a shell of a human being for over a year after being attacked, and the nightmares, fear and anger still remain."

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f...-11-25_abram_elam_aiming_for_fresh_start.html

 

I knew someone would make this comment. But this happened years ago, Parcells gave him a chance, it's not like he's been arrested 5 times and can't stay out of trouble. One stupid night, we all make mistakes. It was a horrible mistake, but this girl seems like her goal is to ruin his life. It's time to give it up. He's not even the one who raped her.

 

Yeah I have to say thats pretty disgusting that they raped her while she was on the rag.

 

No one is saying that rape is okay. The point is that he didn't rape her, the other three guys did. He was there, he shouldn't have been there or he should have put an end to it. The other three guys should have gone to jail and he should have done some time too.

yes it's disgusting that they raped her, but it's even nastier that they did it while she on her time of the month. That says they are just pure disgusting people.