The defense attorney who asked a Louisiana judge to ban pink from the courtroom in the Madison Brooks rape case was held in contempt Monday.
Caitlin Fowlkes, who represents 21-year-old Desmond Carter, used Brooks’ full name in a court filing attached to her July motion seeking to ban trial spectators from wearing pink. Under Louisiana law, sex crime victims must be identified only by their initials in court filings, and attorneys are required to redact their full names.
Brooks, a 19-year-old Louisiana State University student at the time, was allegedly gang-raped by a group of men after a night out in 2023, then struck and killed by a car.
Judge Gail Horne Ray had ruled in August that Brooks' supporters could wear pink in the courtroom, but on Monday she found Fowlkes in contempt for failing to redact Brooks' full name from the filing. Fowlkes received no punishment.
While Brooks' name has received significant public attention and has been discussed by the governor of Louisiana, Ray wrote "the law is clear that an attorney's failure to comply with the provisions of this law 'shall be punishable as contempt of court."
Carter was 17 years old when he was taken into custody at the time of the incident. Brooks left Reggie's Bar in Tigerland alongside three men — Carter, Casen Carver, Kaivon Washington and Everett Lee, according to officials. Authorities say Carver drove the group to a parking lot where Carter and Washington allegedly raped Brooks.
The men told police that Brooks asked to be taken home after the incident, providing multiple incorrect addresses before requesting to be let out near a subdivision, where they said she wandered into the street and was struck by a car.
"Maddie felt safe that night, she thought these were her friends and I think a lot of selfish choices were made that night, and ultimately it led in a horrific ending," Brooks' mother, Ashley Baustert, previously told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital reached out to Fowlkes for comment.
A school security official at an elite Boston school has been charged with the rape of a woman visiting from Ireland after police say they found her naked on the side of the road outside the Massachusetts State Police barracks on Martha's Vineyard.
The suspect was allegedly a guest at the barracks visiting a state trooper friend from college, prosecutors said in court at his arraignment.
Edward Brown, 27, pleaded not guilty in connection with the alleged Aug. 15 attack, which prosecutors said took place inside the barracks.
He allegedly met the victim at The Ritz, a bar in Oak Bluffs — the upscale waterfront community where former President Barack Obama owns a home.
Police say they received two 911 calls around 1 a.m. and arrived to find a naked woman in distress. She said she had been approached by a man at the bar before blacking out.
Assistant District Attorney Courtney Scalice presented a graphic account of what happened in court, telling the judge the victim told investigators she had been followed around the bar by a Black man in a white hat, before she awoke face down and naked.
She told investigators he held her down despite her kicking and screaming. Eventually, she asked for water, and when her attacker left, she said she "ran for her life" out of the building.
She told police she ran down two flights of stairs and out of the building and had been on the road for a few minutes before someone stopped to help.
The responding Oak Bluffs police officers saw bruises on her legs and a red mark on her neck, Scalice said.
Brown had allegedly been staying at the barracks as a guest of a trooper stationed there for the summer. Prosecutors identified the trooper as Ryan Costello and said they found Brown with help from a bouncer at The Ritz, the bar where the victim allegedly met her attacker.
The bouncer didn't know his name but knew he was friends with state troopers and had a photo. Oak Bluffs police sent the picture to Costello on Aug. 29, two weeks after the alleged assault, Scalice said. He identified the man shown as Brown and said they'd been friends since college.
Then on Sept. 11, Costello's attorney gave investigators screenshots of a text conversation between the trooper and Brown, Scalice said.
Brown allegedly gave shifting accounts of the night to Costello, Scalice told the judge: First he denied bringing a female to the barracks, then he said she'd come inside but left on her own, and then he claimed he left her in the Uber and she never came in.
At one point, he allegedly texted Costello, "I'm at the barracks with this chick, is that okay?"
Costello, who prosecutors said was not there at the time, replied, "okay." Brown then allegedly asked him where to find condoms and added, "Beers after I slam."
Once detectives identified a suspect and obtained a search warrant for Brown's Uber account, detectives also found a ride from about a half hour before the 911 calls.
"Officers interviewed the Uber driver who confirmed picking up a Black male matching the defendant's description and a very young looking White female and driving them to the State Police barracks," Scalice said. "The Uber driver described the female as appearing very intoxicated while the Black male was not."
Brown is listed in jail records as 5 feet, 11 inches tall and 260 pounds. Prosecutors said that they learned from Boston police that he had been the subject of four police reports from two ex-girlfriends claiming he had been harassing them between March and August of this year.
The victim is from Ireland and has returned home. Scalice said she had been swabbed for DNA and that male samples suitable for comparison had been recovered.
Oak Bluffs police, working with the Boston Police Department's anti-corruption division, arrested Brown at Boston Latin Academy, where he worked in school security, on Oct. 9. Police allegedly found suspected cocaine in his wallet during the arrest.
"The Massachusetts State Police has had no involvement in the Oak Bluffs Police Department’s investigation," Oak Bluffs Police Chief Jonathan Searle said in a Sept. 10 statement, a month before Brown's arrest. "As part of its investigation, Oak Bluffs Police developed probable cause and applied for and received court-authorized search warrants related to the investigation, including warrants executed at the State Police barracks."
"These allegations are deeply troubling," Massachusetts State Police Col. Geoffrey Noble said. "The Massachusetts State Police are fully cooperating with the ongoing criminal investigation and conducting an internal review of applicable policies, visitor authorization procedures and compliance with established requirements. I am committed to maintaining the highest standards of safety, security and accountability at all State Police facilities and ensuring that any identified deficiencies are addressed with appropriate corrective action."
MSP no longer allows guests to stay at police housing on Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket as a result of this case.
Brown was released on $10,000 cash bail after his arraignment on Oct. 13. Prosecutors had requested $50,000 bail.
The judge ordered him to stay away from the victim and any witnesses. He's due back in court on Dec. 11.
"Mr. Brown has entered a plea of not guilty and denies the allegations," his defense lawyer, Anthony Ellison, told Fox News Digital Monday. "He maintains full faith in the legal process and looks forward to presenting his case in court. A zealous defense will be mounted on his behalf, as there are always two sides to every story."
It’s been a month since the story of the Cornell Seven case became national news. Ruby Cramer documents what she describes as “an ever-expanding blast radius of online abuse, threats, and vigilantism which has touched virtually every person connected to the case, along with people who have no immediate connection to it at all.” Among those closest to the center is the accuser herself:
Jane Doe explained to the police that her phone number and address had been leaked on the internet, and that she’d been receiving harassing phone calls, including that evening. She had recorded one such call. In the recording, the man says, “I’m probably just gonna, like, pull up to your house and shoot. . . .” The caller speaks in a deep, throaty voice that at times sounds almost garbled. In response, Jane Doe says nothing. The man says, “I can hear you breathing.”
While officers were still at the family’s house, dispatch reported that the initial caller was back on the line, saying that he had an AR-15 assault rifle and was going to kill everyone at the house, then himself. About an hour later, police reported another call, this one saying that the house was on fire. In yet another phone call, a man stated that he had explosives and that the family would die—“either now, midnight, or tomorrow.” Jane Doe was receiving additional threats via text message and D.M. Her phone had hundreds of unread messages on it, but some of them she opened. “Typical white btich whore crying ‘rape,’ ” one of the messages read. “Hopefully someone does the world a favor and 🔫🔫🔫 you, nothing of value would be lost.” Officers advised her to keep her phone turned off. The next day, according to her attorney, she started taping pieces of paper over the windows at the house.
The alleged Cornell University gang rape has put a spotlight on programs and educational initiatives at colleges that address sexual violence. But as Cornell’s president promises more student education on the issue after uproar on campus, the effectiveness of these efforts has come under nationwide scrutiny. Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff said the university wants…
The horrific story of Jane Doe and the Cornell Seven has spurred nationwide outrage and revived contentious debates around prevention and education. But one question is going unasked: Who really pays after a sexual assault? In terms of actual dollars and cents? The answer, Cosmopolitan finds, isn’t good:
Leah received an email from the first hospital. It was a bill for $3,338, including $663 for lab work and a pregnancy test she hadn’t asked for. She hadn’t been charged for the rape kit, but the price of just checking into the ER was $2,241. After her parents’ insurance was applied, she owed $451.06.
“I was so unbelievably angry,” she says. “I lost it. I was like, ‘You mean it cost me $450 to get raped?!’”
Most people don’t realize this care might not be covered, says Vega, who has worked as an emergency room nurse, emergency room director, and a SANE. But that’s actually common: KFF analyzed a sample of insurance claim data from 2016 to 2018 (the most up-to-date data KFF has) and found that 83 percent of women who received a sexual violence diagnosis were billed for treatment. Another analysis of emergency room department data from 2019 found that the average bill for sexual assault survivors was $3,551, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Nearly all women who attempt to reach the UK in small boats from northern France are raped on their journey, Shabana Mahmoud, the Home Secretary, has said.
Kate Manne, a philosophy professor at Cornell University, situates the lawsuit from a former student alleging she was gang-raped at the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024 within a broader, deeply troubling campus “rape culture.” The specific details of Jane Doe’s case are horrific, but Manne also points to shocking statistics and examples showing that sexual misconduct is rife and often taken less seriously than other student infractions. She is critical of Cornell’s response and culture, but emphasizes that, tragically, this normalization of misogyny is widespread across many American campuses. A disturbing, important read.
In a deeply misogynistic society, groups of boys and men routinely bond over humiliating and exploiting women, as Soraya Chemaly has written. And the victim is not only physically and emotionally traumatized following one of the most fundamental imaginable violations: They are likely to be doubted and undermined at every subsequent step of the process. In Jane Doe’s case, the district attorney did not bring any charges after relying on the investigation done by campus police; they didn’t even speak with the men involved. The district attorney just announced that they are reopening the case on the basis of new information contained in the civil lawsuit, and in recognition of the fact that “it can take years of therapy and healing for victims of sexual assaults to fully process and understand what happened to them.”
The San Francisco Police Department cleared 14 percent of rape cases last year—half the national rate. An investigation finds that rape kits get tested fast, only for cases to be quietly shelved. Often, the only thing standing “between a report and the shelf” is what’s known as a “pretext call,” a recorded phone conversation in which a survivor tries to extract an admission of guilt from their attacker (aka relives their trauma to do the police’s work for them):
She sat in a room at the SVU headquarters with [Sergeant Johnathan] Ng and a recorder. She dialed the man she alleged raped her. He didn’t pick up. She tried again. No answer.
“If we don’t get an admission, it’s a he-said, she-said thing,” she remembered Ng telling her.
Then, she said, he offered some unsolicited advice.
“He told me that I probably shouldn’t be hanging out with 55-year-old men,” she said.
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