MYSTERY SHROUDING TAWANA BRAWLEY.(Main)

Byline: Joe Mahoney Staff writer

In less than four months, Tawana Brawley has been thrust from her life as a Dutchess County schoolgirl into the center of an intense criminal-justice controversy that has kept her name in the headlines day after day. Who is this girl whose name suddenly may have become as recognizable in New York as any of the presidental candidates? What are her interests and aspirations? Finding the answer to those questions is no simple task, because Tawana Brawley is now in seclusion, refusing to answer questions from reporters and refusing to cooperate with a special state task force set up to investigate allegations that she was sexually attacked by six white men in November. Her mother, Glenda Brawley, and aunt, Juanita Brawley, also have been reluctant to discuss the incident, as have several of her closest friends, who have been questioned at length by the task force. This profile of Tawana Brawley - pieced together from a limited interview with Glenda and Juanita Brawley, talks with neighbors and schoolmates and an examination of public documents - is nearly as fragmented as the account she gave of her ordeal after she was found Nov. 28, four days after she disappeared, smeared with dog excrement, with racial slurs scrawled on her body.

What is known is that Tawana Vicenia Brawley was born out of wedlock on Dec. 15, 1971, in Seat Pleasant, Md. Her mother, Glenda Brawley, was then 16 years old. As an infant, the girl was placed in the custody of her aunt and uncle, Juanita and Matthew Strong, of the Sullivan County community of Monticello. The aunt now identifies herself as Juanita Brawley. The Strongs became her legal guardians, and, in their care, the girl found a kind of home-life stability that would not exist when …