Trump got an undeserved apology. Will an SC family get the one it deserves? | Opinion
The Taylor family of McClellanville, S.C. has been waiting for more than 15 years to receive an official apology for being falsely accused of horrific crimes. Because Donald Trump is heading back to the White House, the Taylors may be less likely to receive one. That’s particularly galling after Trump just received a high-profile apology he did not deserve.
During the first year of the first term of the first Black president, local officials in the Myrtle Beach area began eyeing Timothy Shaun Taylor in the death of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel. A year later, they arrested him for alleged involvement in a near-kidnapping. Law enforcement and media quickly connected the cases. Taylor spent months in jail. Five years later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation targeted his son, Timothy Dashaun Taylor. Relying upon a prison informant, the bureau claimed Dashaun kidnapped and participated in a gang rape of Drexel. They allegedly fed her lifeless body to alligators.
Not one of those charges was true.
Even after a high-level sex offender was convicted and sent to prison for life after confessing to having raped and murdered Drexel, the Taylors did not receive an official apology from the law enforcement agencies involved. A growing awareness of the lifelong harm their investigation had on multiple generations of the Taylor family has not mattered enough to the FBI, Myrtle Beach, Georgetown or Charleston police or the Fifteenth Circuit solicitor of South Carolina, to provide that unequivocal public exoneration.
The Taylors are now suing the FBI. That’s an uphill battle, particularly for a working-class Black family in the Deep South which doesn’t have the resources that were available to the white Duke lacrosse players who were falsely accused of gang rape in 2006. Those players received multimillion-dollar settlements and numerous apologies, the latest of which came last week from the woman who falsely accused them.
The Taylors’ uphill battle got steeper with the re-election of Trump. He has vowed to give law enforcement a freer hand, which will make it harder to rein in police brutality and misconduct — making it even less likely that families like the Taylors can expect a fair shake from the system.
During his first term, Trump rolled back Obama-era federal oversight aimed at reducing systemic problems in police departments that disproportionately hurt Black people.
During his second, Trump has vowed to go further. He plans to bring back stop-and-frisk, a random pat down by an officer not requiring an arrest, and give police officers even more protections against lawsuits aimed to curb police brutality.
Though campaign officials later said he was just joking, Trump argued that police violence would be an effective way to curb crime.
It’s why the Biden administration is rushing to finalize consent decrees with police departments where it has identified patterns of bad police behavior. That will make it harder for Trump to undo them.
But everyone is clear about where things are headed. Even police departments responsible for high-profile brutality cases that led to nationwide protests are balking at entering into binding oversight plans, knowing Trump is about to return to office.
It’s clear the Taylors’ chance of receiving an apology in the next four years was greatly diminishing on Nov. 5. Trump doesn’t apologize. Why would he want law enforcement on his watch to?
It seems as though he believes police can do no wrong — except when they are trying to prevent a mob of his supporters from violently attacking the capital trying to overturn an election.
That’s why it feels particularly infuriating ABC News just apologized to Trump because one of its anchors didn’t fully explain the legal difference in New York between “rape” and “sexual abuse.”
A civil jury found Trump liable for actions he was accused of committing, conduct current New York law rightly deems rape. No matter. He’s receiving $15 million for his presidential foundation after a news outlet didn’t describe it precisely.
The Taylors did not commit the horrific acts for which they stood accused for several years. They can’t even receive an apology for being innocent.