Nutgraf:
"The 13-year-old girl received a love letter that ended with an urgent instruction: 'Destroy this and the last [letter] NOW. I love you, BOB.’
The recipient was Twiggy Tolken, a seventh-grade tennis prodigy in suburban Johannesburg, South Africa. The author, Tolken said, was her 40-year-old coach, Bob Hewitt, one of the greatest doubles players in tennis history.
Tolken, who has given the Globe copies of the letters, is one of six women from the United States and South Africa this month to publicly accuse Hewitt, a 1992 inductee in the International Tennis Hall of Fame, of sexually abusing or harassing them as their coach when they were underage. Tolken said Hewitt became sexually involved with her when she was 12 and wrote the letters in 1981, soon after she turned 13."
Why does this nutgraf work?
The lede is sensationalist and immediately grabs your attention. It capitalizes on the age of the girl and the self-conscious perversity of the love letter with the quote.
The second paragraph gives us all the information we need to know about Who is involved: Twiggy and Bob--highlighting the age difference between the two. We also learn how the 13-year-old girl and a 40-year-old man knew each other and the story starts to unfold. In addition, Bob Hewitt is a tennis star, which is another big attention grabber.
This paragraph really seals the deal--I'm going to keep reading! We find out that Hewitt is not only facing accusations from Twiggy but also from five other women in the U.S. and South Africa. So, he has a history. Now, the Lolita(s) story is in full swing...
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