Manti Te'o: What is truth?

I am not going to act like I am reporting breaking news.  Unless you have spent the past two days completely unattached from television and the internet, you have heard about Manti Te'o and his girlfriend.  The story, in brief, goes like this:
Manti Te'o, linebacker for Notre Dame, was dating a girl named Lennay Kekua.  Back in September his grandmother passed away and six hours later his girlfriend Lennay died from her battle with leukemia.  Te'o then went out that following Saturday and played an inspired game against Michigan State recording 12 tackles and an interception.  By the time the game had aired, news of this tragedy had been made known to the public.  People who would not usually root for Notre Dame, found themselves rooting for Manti Te'o and supporting him as he dealt with unimaginable circumstances.  Pictures and videos surfaced of him on one knee praying and in tear and looking towards the heavens.  As the captain and senior leader of the Notre Dame defense, his example of heroism and strength led his team to an undefeated season and a spot in the national championship game.  Along the way, he received many awards as the college football player of the year and finished as the runner-up in the Heisman vote.  Many people looked to Te'o and found strength in his story of courage.
Yesterday afternoon, deadspin.com reported that his girlfriend, the one that he had cried about and told ESPN in an interview that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever met, was revealed to have never existed.  There was no record of her death, no obituary, no record of her college enrollment, no record of her birth, no record of her whatsoever.  According to deadspin, she was a fictional girl created by a man named Ronaiah Tuiososopo; it was all a hoax.  It is still unclear as to Te'o involvement in the hoax and whether or not he was the victim or someone's "sick joke" as he called it, or if he was involved and used this death as a chance to gain publicity.  A day after the story broke, it is even less clear than ever what is truth and what is fabricated.  Te'o has since admitted that he never met this girl in person but instead, developed an online relationship with her and "grew to care deeply about her."  He has said that he kept this story from the public because he was understandably, "incredibly embarrassed."
I have my own opinion about Te'o and his level of involvement, but at this point, it is only an opinion.  No one can do more than speculate.  But I have never in my entire life heard a story as odd, strange, and bizarre as this.  I do not have words to describe my reaction to first reading the deapspin article yesterday afternoon.  I was in shock that something like this could happen.  I know that people fall in love online and that on a regular basis, those people that they "love" turn out to be someone else.  I know that things like that happen.  But to simply say that Te'o was fooled doesn't answer all the questions and does not fill in the blanks.  How could he date this girl for one year and never want to skype with her? How could he be in love with a girl who never came to one of his football games? How could he not go and see her after her car accident, or when she was diagnosed with leukemia  or attend her funeral?  Is it possible that someone who graduated from the same High School as the President of this country could truly be fooled to this extent and never question the reality of this person.  Something just simply does not add up; 1 + 1 is not equaling 2.

I wish that I could write an article in defense of Te'o.  I want to believe him.  He is from the town in Hawaii where I have lived for several years where my family still lives.  He is a member of my same religion.  From everything I know about him, he is a good person.  But still, until more facts come out, I do not know what is truth.
As I have thought a lot about this story the past couple of days (I have been forced to think about it, nothing else has been discussed on ESPN), two experiences from my own life have come to mind, one from my own experience, and the other from someone else.
The first experience is when I was 16 or 17 and I took the role of Roniaiah Tuiososopo and created a fake profile online.  Let me give you the back story.  There was a kid who went to my church named Kaden.  I had never had a single conversation with this guy and I do not know why, but for some odd reason, he hated me.  One night I went to a dance with a group of friends and Kaden was there.  The entire night, no matter where I went, if I crossed paths with Kaden, he would repeat "Jimmy is a fag, Jimmy is a fag, Jimmy is a fag", over and over again until we were no longer around each other.  At one point I was dancing with a girl I though was cute and he came over to me and continued to call me a fag.  I said nothing to him, but instead decided I would get back at him some other way.  That night I went over to my friend Troy's house and along with our friend Ben, we created a fake myspace account for a girl named Brooke.  We did a google image search and found two random pictures of girls online who looked similar and added those to her profile.  Over the next few days we requested to be friends with tons of people, created status updates, and whatever else you use to do on myspace.  After a week or two, I (or should I say Brooke) requested to be friends with Kaden.  He promptly accepted.  I then sent him a message telling him how attractive he was and how much I wanted to meet him and hang out with him.  He would always respond and showed a lot of interest in this random girl he had met online.  These messages back and forth went on for only a few days before it all hit the fan.  At some point he wanted to meet her and I obliged.  But before the meeting took place, and to this day I do not know how, he found out that I was behind Brooke and that he had been talking to me all along.  Since he had not shared anything too intimate or personal with Brooke, he was nothing more than a little embarrassed and the story ends there.  But for me, it was worth it, he never talked crap to me again because he knew that doing so would risk this story coming out.
So how does this relate to Manti Te'o?  If we put Manti in Kaden's place, I believe that it is very likely that at some point, Manti was fooled and was the victim of a hoax.  But even though my hoax was much less elaborate and did not include twitter messages or phone calls, after a short time, Kaden knew that something was fishy and that he had been duped. So how is it possible that Manti Te'o could fall victim to a year long prank?  I have to believe that Te'o, even if he was fooled to start off with, could not be naive enough to believe this girl was real for an entire year.
My second story is about a basketball player from the University of Arizona who did suffer a real and unbelievable tragedy.  Kevin Parrom, who is currently a Senior guard for the Wildcats and is having a great season, did not fare so well the summer before his junior year.  Within the space of a few months, Parrom was shot in the leg and had both his mother and grandmother pass away.  I cannot imagine something so tragic happening.  But unless you are a fan of Arizona basketball it is very likely that you never heard about Kevin Parrom and his tragedy.  I understand that some people are very public with the details of their personal life other people like to keep their personal lives personal.  In the case of Kevin Parrom, his devastation was not a headline story on College Gameday.  Like Te'o, Parrom was playing for a top tier team.  Arizona may not have quite the same pageantry and tradition of Notre Dame, but it has been among the elite college basketball programs in the country for now 4 decades.  I tend to think that most people suffering from such horrendous circumstances would not want to do newspaper, phone, and TV interviews.  I understand that Te'o did not go out of his way to seek such publicity, it came as part of playing for such a famous team, but if he did in reality lose his grandmother and girlfriend in the same day, I can only imagine that he would want to grieve in private, and not in front of an American audience.  I am not suggesting that Te'o was involved from the beginning and that he helped to create this fake girl with the goal of obtaining more publicity, but again, it just doesn't make sense and we are only left to assumptions.
I want to believe that Te'o was the victim and not one of the culprits.  With my whole heart, I want to believe that we do not live in a world that is filled with liars and deceivers.  I am not yet going to brand Te'o as a liar nor will I brand him as a naive kid who got caught in the middle of an awful prank.  I too will have to wait until more details emerge.  But all I can say is that from what has come to light, everything is not adding up and Te'o has a lot of questions to answer.