Hoaxer Tawana Brawley celebrated in New Jersey fund-raiser

• By REBECCA ROSENBERG and PEDRO OLIVEIRA JR.
• Last Updated: 5:37 AM, May 13, 2013
• Posted: 2:53 AM, May 13, 2013

EXCLUSIVE

Infamous rape hoaxster and court deadbeat Tawana Brawley got rock-star treatment in New Jersey yesterday, posing for photos with dozens of supporters honoring her as a courageous victim of injustice — as they stuffed envelopes full of cash for her.

Brawley, 40 — whose claim that she was raped by six men was revealed to be a fake 25 years ago — beamed as she and her mother, Glenda, were hailed for surviving society’s “lies since 1987.”

“Let’s let this young queen Tawana know we love her to death,” said incendiary former City College professor Leonard Jeffries, the master of ceremonies for the event at the Integrity Masonic Temple in Paterson.

NY Post: G.N. MIller

BIG BASH: Tawana Brawley attends an event in her honor last night in Paterson, NJ, where she was given donations to pay off debts stemming from her ’87 rape hoax.

Jeffries has said “rich Jews” financed the slave trade and whites are violent, cruel “ice people.’’

Yesterday’s crowd of more than 150 roared with applause at his praise of Brawley.

The event’s organizers charged $50 per person, with the proceeds going to a kids camp run by the Freedom Retreat for Children.

The camp’s annual fund-raiser is usually held at the Cotton Club in Harlem — but couldn’t be there this year because Glenda Brawley still has a warrant out for her arrest over procedural charges related to the infamous hoax.

Inside the hall, attendees were given envelopes for the Tawana Brawley Defense Fund to help her cover legal costs for the lawsuit she lost to former Dutchess County Prosecutor Steven Pagones, one of the men falsely accused of raping Brawley in 1987.

Brawley originally owed $190,000 for the defamation suit, but the amount has ballooned to more than $430,000 with interest.

The Post recently found her living under an assumed name in Virginia, and a court promptly ordered her wages to be garnisheed to start paying back the debt.

Several people dropped $50 bills in the envelopes. One supporter, the Rev. C. Herbert Oliver, gave a “very substantial donation,” a source said. And an older woman said she gave some of her pension.

Pagones, however, was outraged.

“It’s ridiculous,” he told The Post.

“If [Brawley] wanted to be a hero in the justice system, she could come out and admit the entire thing was a hoax.

“She can do the right thing — she could just tell the truth.”

Found in a trash bag in Dutchess County with slurs scrawled on her body, a 15-year-old Brawley ignited national outrage by claiming she was raped by six men, including Pagones and a cop. A grand jury found the tale to be false.

Brawley refused comment as she left yesterday’s event with a coat over her head, surrounded by eight men. She was driven off in an SUV that had Virginia plates.

Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan