CHARLES GIBSON, ABCNEWS And now a story that is going to force you to choose sides. A respected prosecutor, a pillar of his community who says as a teen-ager he was caught in a youthful indiscretion. His accuser? A woman who describes a shocking episode that she says happened when they were both in high school. Only one of them is telling the whole truth. But which one? And why are they reliving it today, 35 years later? Here’s chief correspondent Chris Wallace.

CHRIS WALLACE, ABCNEWS (VO) The kids at Great Mills High School look like most teen-agers in 1964. But behind the all-American scenes, the football games and dances, students here shared a dark secret. One of them may have been gang-raped.

CARLA BAILEY I just remember screaming for help. And that’s all.

CHRIS WALLACE Did help ever come?

CARLA BAILEY No.

CHRIS WALLACE Did Carla consent to having sex with you?

RICK FRITZ Yes.

CHRIS WALLACE Nothing forced about it.

RICK FRITZ Nothing whatsoever.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Rick Fritz and Carla Bailey, who were schoolmates back then, now give very different accounts of that explosive incident. Whatever happened between them as teen-agers 35 years ago, it’s suddenly front-page news in this corner of southern Maryland.
Do you think you’re objective. Do you think you’re even-handed?

KEN ROSSIGNOL Probably not.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Publisher Ken Rossignol ran the rape headline on election day, just as Fritz was running to be the top prosecutor in the county. This is the story of how far an aggressive reporter went to dig into a candidate’s past. And the extraordinary step the candidate took to fight back.

RICK FRITZ It was cold. It was calculated. It was intended to make me lose an election.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) How did it come to this a prominent 53-year-old lawyer having to answer for what he may have done when he was 18? To understand how it all happened, first you need to understand where it took place.
Some 50 miles outside Washington, St. Mary’s County may seem a world apart from the nation’s capital, but it’s small-town southern flavor can mislead you, because we found this community is rife with blood feuds and political power struggles that rival anything you’ll find in the big city.
(VO) Here, among the tobacco farms and cotton alongside the pristine stretches of waterfront, they’d been playing an especially rough brand of hardball politics for generations.

KEN ROSSIGNOL But if you do have any more information in Trooper O’Reilly’s arrest...

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) One of the key players is Ken Rossignol, who puts out a weekly tabloid called St. Mary’s Today.

KEN ROSSIGNOL There were six witnesses.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) He is the reporter, and photographer, and editor-in-chief at the paper.

ELLEN St. Mary’s Today.

CHRIS WALLACE Sometimes his 80-year-old mother Ellen helps out with the phones. But Rossignol is essentially a one-man band.

KEN ROSSIGNOL Any evidence of alcohol?

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Long before he targeted Rick Fritz, Rossignol was drawing blood in St. Mary’s County.

KEN ROSSIGNOL How long before you all are through with this?

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Each week he prints the names of local residents arrested for drunk driving. A county commissioner who falls asleep during a meeting earns a mention on the front page.

KEN ROSSIGNOL Some might call me a crusader. I don’t think so. I think I’m doing my job.

CHRIS WALLACE You know what some people call your paper, don’t you?

KEN ROSSIGNOL Oh, sure, they call it “the rag.” It probably means they don’t like it. But what you know? Them that don’t like it shouldn’t.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) In the fall of ’98, Rick Fritz was running to become state’s attorney and from the start of the campaign, Fritz says, the paper had a fatal attraction obsession with him. One story alleged when he was a deputy prosecutor, Fritz was soft on drug dealers. Another accused him of delaying a trial so he could go bear hunting.

RICK FRITZ He’s made me look like a liar to the court. He’s made me look like a thief. He’s made me appear as though I’m giving inside information to drug dealers. Obviously, what they were endeavoring to do was to blow me up, dynamite me.

CHRIS WALLACE You printed story after story about Rick Fritz. You really went after him, didn’t you?

KEN ROSSIGNOL I think we went after his record. We’re going to look at the record, and we’re going to tell our readers what the record shows. And we’re going to tell them what we think about it, too.

CHRIS WALLACE Were you trying to beat him, to make sure he didn’t win?

KEN ROSSIGNOL Absolutely.

RICK FRITZ (From tape) The important issue for the citizens of this county...

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) In the final days of the campaign, it became an issue that both candidates for state’s attorney had been in trouble with the law when they were much younger. And this was Ken Rossignol’s silver bullet. Looking through court records, he found that back in high school, Rick Fritz was charged with carnal knowledge of a female child, that he and two other young men had sex with a 15-year-old. Fritz pled guilty to the misdemeanor and got off with probation. On election eve, the most explosive story of the campaign rolled off the presses. The headline was a bombshell, “Fritz Guilty Of Rape.”
Do you think it’s fair to print an article like that on election day when the candidate is going to have no opportunity to respond?

KEN ROSSIGNOL Sure it’s fair. He’s a big boy.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) But timing wasn’t the only issue. Was that front-page headline an accurate description of the crime?
Wouldn’t it have been more accurate to say he pled guilty to sex with an under-age girl? A lot more accurate then saying he pled guilty to rape.

KEN ROSSIGNOL Oh, that’s a good headline, I wish you were here at the time.

CHRIS WALLACE You make it sound like, well, it wouldn’t sell as many papers.

KEN ROSSIGNOL No, you said that. I didn’t say that.

CHRIS WALLACE You don’t have any qualms about putting pled guilty to rape on the front page of your paper?

KEN ROSSIGNOL No. None whatsoever.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Before the sun came up election morning, Fritz and some of his supporters decided to strike back, to make sure that voters never got a chance to see that front page.

RICK FRITZ You have people at this point in time that, in essence, said, ‘Damnit. Enough is enough.’

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Campaign workers, including several off-duty sheriff’s deputies, fanned out across the county to buy every St. Mary’s Today they could find. At 5:00 AM they purchased all 70 papers at this grocery. An hour later, the 50 copies at this gas station were gone. And all night, they cleaned out every vending machine. By election morning, anyone who wanted to read Rossignol’s paper, was out of luck.

KEN ROSSIGNOL You know, it’s not my First Amendment right. They violated my reader’s First Amendment right.

CHRIS WALLACE Rossignol was outraged, calling it a direct violation of freedom of the press.

KEN ROSSIGNOL When law enforcement officers are going to step across the line and violate people’s constitutional rights, because they feel that’s the only way they can win an election, the closest thing that you can find to that is what happened in Nazi Germany and other Third World totalitarian countries.

RICK FRITZ He put them on the market for purchase. And they were purchased.

CHRIS WALLACE Mr. Fritz, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you think that when a publisher puts out several thousand copies of his paper, don’t you think he expects them to actually get to the readers, not just to be bought out by a politician and thrown away?

RICK FRITZ I’m sure he did, but most publishers are not attempting to subvert democracy as he was.

CHRIS WALLACE He has a right to choose his method of distribution, and you have a right to interfere?

RICK FRITZ Not to interfere, to purchase.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Some people called what the Fritz campaign did on election day the “newspaper caper.” But, it’s turned out to be no joke. Rossignol complained to authorities that the deputies intimidated store clerks into selling them the papers. Now the FBI is reportedly investigating whether the off-duty officers committed civil rights violations.
Do you think that you or the off-duty sheriff’s deputies did anything wrong?

RICK FRITZ No, absolutely not.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) On election night with the details of the rape allegations still a secret to most voters, Fritz won with 54 percent of the vote. It was a victory not only over his opponent in the campaign but also over Rossignol’s newspaper. But it didn’t last long. Because one more key player was about to be heard from. After 35 years, this woman was finally ready to break her silence.
Richard Fritz, the man who is now the state’s attorney. He was the second man who raped you.

DIANE SAWYER, ABCNEWS When we come back, Carla Bailey comes forward after 35 years to tell her story. And wait until you hear what she says happened that day. Stay with us.

ANNOUNCER She calls it gang rape. He says it was consensual.

CHRIS WALLACE Why would a woman 34 years after the fact make up a story like that?

ANNOUNCER Who is telling the truth? When 20/20 continues.

(Commercial Break)

ANNOUNCER Will this man’s career be ruined by something he and two friends did in high school?

CHRIS WALLACE What makes you think that a 15-year-old girl would willingly have sex with three young men one after another?

RICK FRITZ Happens all the time.

ANNOUNCER Hear the victim’s story before you decide.
(Commercial Break)

DIANE SAWYER Rick Fritz has been elected state’s attorney but is still fighting for his reputation after a newspaper story that accused him of rape when he was a teen-ager. Fritz says it was consensual when he and his two friends had sex with a schoolmate. But 35 years later that girl from his past reappeared, and, as Chris Wallace reports, she calls what happened that day gang rape.

CARLA BAILEY I didn’t want to do it. They forced me to do it. That’s wrong.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Carla Bailey, who is now 50, had moved away from St. Mary’s County to a small town in Pennsylvania. She was stunned to learn that a painful secret from her past had become front-page news in her hometown.

KATHY HEWITT I knew it was gonna upset her. I knew it was going to enrage her.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Kathy Hewitt, a former classmate and life-long friend, sent Bailey the rape story and let her know what Fritz was saying, that she consented to everything that happened that day.

CARLA BAILEY Makes me look like I’m a piece of trash or something. Like I’m the one who’s, ‘oh, yeah, come on guys,’ and it wasn’t that way.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Bailey tracked down publisher Ken Rossignol and last April he printed the follow-up to his election-day bombshell. The woman who says Fritz raped her, coming forward after 35 years.
About the only thing that Richard Fritz and Carla Bailey agree on is one day in November 1964, they ended up here on St. George’s Island on the Potomac River along with some friends. They went to a small house on the island. What happened next is where the story is split.
(VO) Fritz was a senior, Bailey a sophomore. She says she can’t remember many details that day, but she can’t forget what it turned into it.

CARLA BAILEY I somehow ended up in a room. I remember a window. One single bed, and that’s where it happened. These three guys all took turns with me. And raped me. One would hold my feet. One would hold my arms. And then one would do their thing and they took turns.

RICK FRITZ Totally untrue.

CHRIS WALLACE All three acts were consensual?

RICK FRITZ Yes, it was a consensual situation.

CHRIS WALLACE And she wasn’t saying that?

RICK FRITZ No, no.

CHRIS WALLACE No chance that they could have thought you were consenting? That you wanted this to happen?

CARLA BAILEY No, not in my book.

CHRIS WALLACE Did you struggle?

CARLA BAILEY Yes, I struggled and screamed.

CHRIS WALLACE What makes you think a 15-year-old girl would willingly have sex with three young men one after another?

RICK FRITZ Happens all the time.

CHRIS WALLACE Maybe I’m innocent, Mr. Fritz. I don’t know a lot of girls who have sex with three guys, one right after another, when they’re 15-years-old.

RICK FRITZ Well, I can say that it occurred. It was voluntary. I mean, I don’t want to speak poorly about the girl. But three of us had sex with her. And that should speak for itself.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Bailey says she didn’t report the attack to her parents or the police. But by the next morning, Great Mills High School was buzzing. Rumors that Carla had been raped swept through the halls, and so did whispers that she had sex voluntarily with three boys.

KATHY HEWITT When I heard rape, I absolutely believed it. All of us girls were just—we just figured that was the end of her life. Her life had just been ruined. Who would marry her?

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Bailey’s parents finally heard and went to the authorities. But the case never got to trial. As we’ve said, Fritz and another of the young men pled guilty to a misdemeanor, having sex with an underage girl, and got off with probation. The third boy was a juvenile, and his record is sealed.

CARLA BAILEY Just like it was a waste of my time, my parents’ time to take me over to the courthouse and even press charges.

CHRIS WALLACE Did you feel that he got away with it?

CARLA BAILEY Yeah. I just know that he should have been punished for what he did.

CHRIS WALLACE Bailey believes the boys only got a slap on the wrist because one of Fritz’s friends was from a prominent St. Mary’s family. But Fritz says it just shows there was no case.

RICK FRITZ I know that, as a prosecutor myself, if a 15-year-old girl came in and told me that she was held down, raped by three different people, I’d immediately have them arrested and charged with first-degree rape.

CHRIS WALLACE And so the fact that the prosecutor didn’t do that in your case indicates what?

RICK FRITZ Either she did not say that, OK, or else her story was so totally incredible that he just out and out did not believe her.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) We contacted the prosecutor in the case. All he would say is that he handled the matter appropriately. Whatever the reason for the light sentence, when Bailey returned to school, friends say the outgoing 15-year-old was never the same.

KATHY HEWITT She was ashamed. She was scared. She was all of a sudden afraid. She had to walk down the halls and see these guys coming down the halls smiling. And what did that do to her self-worth? And I watched my friend change.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) While Rick Fritz went on to become a successful lawyer and now county prosecutor, Carla Bailey married at 17 and eventually left town. Thirty-five years after the incident, she finds it difficult to describe what she’s been through.

CHRIS WALLACE Do you think about this often?

CARLA BAILEY Sometimes I’ll just go in my room and cry.

CHRIS WALLACE Fifteen-year-old girl, it’s a lot to go through, isn’t it?

CARLA BAILEY Well, yeah, I guess.

CHRIS WALLACE Here’s the question I keep wondering about. Why would a woman, 34 years after the fact, make up a story like that?

RICK FRITZ Well, my guesses are that obviously someone from Mr. Rossignol’s newspaper got a hold of her, I would assume paid her. And I have no evidence of this, but I’m thinking about what would have made her say that.

CHRIS WALLACE Fritz has suggested that Ken Rossignol paid you for your story.

CARLA BAILEY He didn’t pay me.

CHRIS WALLACE Never got a dime?

CARLA BAILEY No.

KEN ROSSIGNOL It’s outrageous, I think that is delusional. It’s a lie that they’ve made up.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Ken Rossignol also denies paying for the story, and then delivers this counter punch. He has challenged Fritz, the man who prosecutes criminals, to submit to a polygraph test himself.

KEN ROSSIGNOL I think he should take a lie detector test to determine his truthfulness, or he should step down.

RICK FRITZ If Ken Rossignol wants to put up $500,000 in escrow so I can sue his butt for the libelous activity that he has engaged in over the last year and a half, I’d be more than happy to take the polygraph examination. More than happy to.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Chances are we’ll never know what really happened that day on St. George’s Island, but Ken Rossignol’s election-day headline reopened all the old wounds. Carla Bailey says she still hopes for justice.

CARLA BAILEY I would like to see him pay. Instead of going to jail, he’s going to just lose what he has.

CHRIS WALLACE (VO) As for Fritz, he says he’s already lost plenty, that people now ask his wife whether he raped that woman. But once the story hit the front page, he says he did what they always do in St. Mary’s County—he fought back.

RICK FRITZ Never was my intention to make her out to be trash. But if the facts of the case are the facts of the case, then so be it.