Kerri Dunn was a visiting
psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College
. She was convicted of perpetrating a hoax,
in which she defaced her own car by slashing its tires, breaking
its windows, and spray painting several ethnic slurs and a partial
swastika on its doors and hood. Dunn was
tried in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Pomona, California. A
jury found her guilty of one misdemeanor count of filing a false
police report and two felony counts of attempting to file
fraudulent insurance claims on her car.
Attack Hoax
The same day as the hoax, March 9, 2004, Dunn gave a lecture on the
topic of hate speech at Claremont McKenna. She reported that
someone else was responsible for the damage to her car and spoke at
a campus rally the following evening. Dunn blamed the incident on a
covert group of white male racists being supported by the general
atmosphere of intolerance on the campus.
- Dunn was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay a
$20,000 fine. At the time of her conviction, Dunn continued to
maintain her innocence. The incident followed a series of
controversial — and widely considered to be racial — incidents at
the
Claremont Colleges. At Dunn's
sentencing, Judge Charles Horan accused her of exploiting the other
incidents at the Claremont Colleges (which, ultimately, were
attributed to insensitive youthful indiscretions and not overt
racism ) to advance her own agenda. Judge Horan stated that Dunn's
actions "...terrorized minority students on the campus and made
suspects out of all the other students." According to Judge Horan,
Dunn's crimes coupled with her unwillingness to confess to them
warranted her confinement in state prison.
As a result of perpatrating the hoax, she is listed as #92 in
Bernard Goldberg's bestselling book
100 People
Who Are Screwing Up America.
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