Lawyer for Rape Accuser Requests 'Prayers' for Patrick Kane and His Client

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Roland M. Cercone, in a letter sent to the Chicago Tribune and The Buffalo News late Saturday, said his client is “ready, willing, and able to cooperate, as she has always done throughout this investigation” with any inquiry regarding what District Attorney Frank Sedita III called a “bizarre hoax.”

He also asked people to pray for her, for Kane, for Kane’s family — and for those who keep leaking information about the investigation.

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Cercone believes Sedita, in his Friday press conference, left the false impression the 21-year-old woman he represents had declined to cooperate as authorities looked into how the plastic and paper bags got into her mother’s hands.

Writes Cercone:

More troubling is the fact that it has been alleged that I or others have refused to let the complainant in this matter speak with the District Attorney or his investigators. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When asked if the District Attorney’s office had spoken with the complainant, Frank Sedita responded that she is represented by counsel. I am confident he did not mean to imply that counsel refused to permit the complainant to speak with his office, but that is certainly what people inferred. And that is how easy it is to have the truth misrepresented.

For the record, no one has asked to speak to the complainant regarding the latest incident.

On Friday, Sedita painstakingly explained how the mother was given a plastic bag at the hospital in which to put her daughter’s top. The bag had the nurse’s initials and the daughter’s name inscribed on it. When Hamburg police investigators went to her home later, they took the shirt and placed the garment into an official police evidence bag, Sedita said. At no time did that bag ever contain a rape kit or DNA evidence, Sedita said.

He offered video evidence and cited interviews with police, the nurse, the mother and forensic evidence techs to reinforce his statement that the chain of custody of evidence regarding the rape-kit DNA had never been broken and the evidence wasn’t tampered with.

The accuser’s other attorney, Thomas Eoannou, dropped his client after he learned the mother’s story did not hold up under scrutiny.

Cercone, who is a deacon in his Baptist church and a former chief prosecutor in Erie County’s sex offense unit, opens his letter with the phrase, “What a Mess! What a Circus!”

He concluded his letter asking people to pray for the young lady, saying her life “has been irreparably damaged and forever altered,” and to pray for Patrick Kane and his family, too.

He also suggested people pray for those leaking information to the press.

“The leaks and misrepresentations have simply gotten out of hand,” Cercone wrote.

The Buffalo News, citing sources, reported last week that forensic testing shows Kane’s DNA was not found in or near the woman’s “pelvic area.” The Buffalo News was the first to report on the allegations the morning after the incident between Kane and the woman, who met on Aug. 1.

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