CHUCK LIDDY - cliddy@newsobserver.com
Crystal Gail Mangum confers with her attorney Friday Aug. 27, 2010, during a recess in her hearing for allegedly violating her bond conditions. Mangum is jailed under $150,000 bond after court officials accused her of sharing a home with her children in violation of a pretrial release order. A pretrial services officer testified Thursday that Mangum had received subsidized child care because her three children were in her custody. But bond conditions set in July limited her contact with the children to 4 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday because they are allegedly her victims.
DURHAM -- Crystal Gail Mangum is jailed under $150,000 bond after court officials accused her of sharing a home with her children in violation of a pretrial release order.
A pretrial services officer testified Thursday that Mangum had received subsidized child care because her three children were in her custody. But bond conditions set in July limited her contact with the children to 4 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday because they are allegedly her victims.
Mangum is charged with arson, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, injury to personal property and resisting an officer. Police say she set her former boyfriend Milton Walker's clothes on fire in a bathtub while her children, ages 3, 9 and 11, were there and officers were in the home responding to a domestic violence call.
In 2006 Mangum's accusations of rape caused Duke University lacrosse players to be charged; months later, the charges were dropped.
When Mangum went to jail in February, she signed an order granting custody of the three children to the father of the two youngest, and that remains in force.
Superior Court Judge Milton Fitch recessed Mangum's hearing until this morning so her daughter's day care provider could testify about the children's living situation.
In July, with the district attorney's office's consent, a judge agreed that Mangum could see her children if the father or a court appointee supervised. The judge switched Mangum to electronic monitoring with a curfew instead of 24-hour house arrest.
The children were to continue living with the father; Mangum planned to move in with her sick mother. But pretrial services case manager Christie Long said the day care provider told her the children had moved in with Mangum and her mother.
