COLUMBUS, Ohio - Megan Williams’s shocking accusations initially strained the imagination: Seven white people beat her with sticks, forced her to eat feces, raped her, and taunted her with racial slurs over several days in a ramshackle trailer in West Virginia.
But the suspects eventually confessed to their actions and pleaded guilty. All but one were sent to prison. Now Williams, who is black, is taking it all back.
Williams lied in 2007 because she wanted to get back at a boyfriend who had beaten her, her attorney, Byron L. Potts, said yesterday at a news conference.
Williams no longer wants to live a lie, Potts said.
“She told me the only thing not self-inflicted were the bruises on her face,’’ Potts said.
Williams, 22, who now lives with a caregiver in Columbus, did not appear before reporters. Potts said she has received phone calls threatening her life.
Seven white men and women were convicted in the case. Police said the assaults occurred at a trailer owned by Frankie Brewster in a rural area about 50 miles from Charleston, W.Va. Williams was rescued after an anonymous caller alerted authorities.
Potts said that Brewster’s son, Bobby, was the boyfriend who had beaten Williams and that she had stabbed herself with a straight razor to help embellish the story of being tortured.
Prosecutors, who knew about the relationship during the case, dismissed Williams’s new claim.
Potts urged prosecutors in West Virginia to reevaluate the case and he said that Williams wants people convicted to be released from prison.
Brian Abraham, the former prosecutor who pursued the cases, said authorities realized early in the investigation that they could not rely on statements from Williams, who tended to exaggerate details. Instead, he said, the seven defendants were convicted on their own statements and physical evidence.
“If she’s going to say that she made it all up, that’s absurd,’’ Abraham said.
