MORGANTOWN —
A black West Virginia woman who was kidnapped and tortured by a group of white people in 2007, then tried to recant her accusations two years later, has been arrested for violating a domestic violence protective order.
Megan Williams, 25, was charged with four misdemeanors after she threw a can of food at her husband on the street then tried to remove property from the home she’d been ordered to avoid, Hinton Police Chief Derek Snavely said Wednesday.
Williams was being held on $10,000 bond at the Southern Regional Jail after her arraignment in Summers County Magistrate Court. It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney.
Snavely said he also charged Williams with petty larceny, fleeing on foot and obstructing an officer because she ran about a block when he tried to arrest her Tuesday afternoon.
He said Williams’ husband, Robert Lee Brady Jr., had obtained a protective order after his wife’s Aug. 14 arrest on a charge of falsely reporting an emergency. She was jailed for a few days before making $500 bail.
There have been multiple 911 calls about domestic disturbances at the home in the year or so the couple has been living in Hinton, but Snavely said Aug. 14 was the first arrest.
Williams appears to have last posted on a Facebook page under the name Megan Brady on Aug. 13, the day before her previous arrest. There are multiple posts in the preceding days accusing her husband of mistreating her and claiming she is pregnant.
Brady did not immediately respond to a message from The Associated Press.
Snavely said the couple has a baby that is currently with Brady’s mother.
Seven people pleaded guilty to various charges after Williams told police in 2007 that her captors, including boyfriend Bobby Brewster, had beaten and raped her, forced her to drink urine and eat feces, poured hot wax on her and taunted her with racial slurs in a trailer in Logan County. Six of those people were sentenced to long prison terms.
In 2009, however, Ohio attorney Byron Potts held a news conference in which he said Williams was recanting the allegations. Potts said at the time that Williams had fabricated the story to get revenge on an ex-boyfriend, and all her wounds except facial bruises were self-inflicted.
Two days after that announcement, Williams’ caretaker said the young woman had mental problems and had told different stories at different times.
Potts was in court Wednesday and not immediately available for comment, but a secretary said their attorney-client relationship ended when Williams refused to cooperate.
Brian Abraham, who was the Logan County prosecutor five years ago, called Williams’ recantation “absurd,” adding that the captors were convicted on their own statements and physical evidence.
Among them was Frankie Brewster, mother of Williams’ then-boyfriend. While serving a 10- to 25-year sentence at the Lakin Correctional Center, Frankie Brewster told WCHS-TV that the crimes had, in fact, occurred and “all of us participated.”
Brewster denied that race or Williams’ relationship with her son started the series of crimes. Rather, she blamed a co-defendant who had accused Williams of stealing money and food stamps.
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