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The Lie That “Just Happens”

Fake allegations of rape and other crimes—with no obvious motivation—are a particularly mysterious phenomenon.

On his fourth day behind bars, Bekele says, his background as a therapist finally kicked in. He might be in for a while, he realized—years, if found guilty. So it was time to find a way to cope. He got to know his cellmate—he uses the slang term "celly"—who gave him pointers: Stay invisible and never tell anyone what crime you're accused of, especially if it's rape. Bekele laid low, sticking close to a group of inmates who passed the time reading Bible verses. Ultimately, he says, his priest was right about the clinging-to-faith part—behind bars, that's all he had.

On the ninth day, guards cuffed Bekele and loaded him onto a windowless bus for a trip to Seattle. Someone on the bus knew about the rape charge and started shouting about it. Bekele says he started praying harder than ever.

Craig LaRotonda/Revelation Studios
The kidnapper who does not exist.
Courtesy of the King County Sheriff's Office
The kidnapper who does not exist.

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At the courthouse where the bus arrived, King County prosecutors had received the investigators' conclusions about the e-mail. Bekele's ordeal was almost over.

He finally got to the waiting area outside the arraignment room at the King County Courthouse. Then he saw Flennaugh on the other side of a glass window. Flennaugh indicated for him to come out and talk. The prosecutor's office had dropped the charges, he told Bekele (though for a while they left open the possibility of refiling).

Bekele went back to the Regional Justice Center and changed out of the orange jumpsuit. His clothes were still being held as part of the ongoing investigation, so a jail employee gave him a pair of jeans. The first thing he saw when he walked out was his daughter. "She was so happy to see me," he says. "And that was a beautiful sight."

Clifton pleaded guilty to filing a false police report. Her plea agreement included the provision that she receive mental help. A judge sentenced her to eight days on a work crew; she served no jail time. She remains on probation through 2010.

Bekele is now back in the classroom, though he says he's changed some things about the way he operates, keeping careful records of where he is and whom he's with. There is lingering fear that something like this could happen again, he says. "To this day, at times, that feeling comes up."

Bekele never filed any kind of lawsuit against Clifton or members of the community-college district, despite overtures from attorneys who would have represented him. He says he had to forgive Clifton and move on with his life. How did he do that? Like the rape charge itself, "It's something that just happened."

lonstot@seattleweekly.com

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