Tonight, on a local PBS show with local stories, a rape/suicide that happened at University of Missouri over two years ago was brought up. That tweaked my interest as it'd been a long time for it to be in the news again, then I heard something come out of a commentators mouth that made me reach for the phone and not give up dialing until I got on air. This, verbatim, is what I heard in response to another commentators assertion that the young woman involved had reported it over and over and nothing was done. "Well, you know, she was mentally ill so she could have been lying". WTF? So I did some digging and this is what happened to the young woman.
In June 2011, Sasha Menu Courey, a young woman with Olympic swim team ambitions who went to the University of Missouri, committed suicide. At first, no one knew what had happened to send the usually bubbly young woman into the downward spiral of depression that ended in her death. Now they do. It seems she was raped on campus in April, 2010. Not only was she raped, she reported it. To both a rape crisis counselor and a campus therapist, records show. In the ensuing months, a campus nurse, two doctors and, according to her journal, an athletic department administrator also learned of her claim that she had been assaulted. More people reported it too. Even people from the football team who were teammates of the persons, yes, it's plural, who assaulted Ms. Courey. Seems there's a video wandering around out there now too and people have seen it and talked about it. All these people knew and did nothing and what they did do was even more reprehensible. They, the university, campus security etc. when questioned by the parents about what might have gone wrong, stonewalled, lied, accused the victim of being mentally ill, said it was "consensual until she changed her mind" and all of the usual things. NONE of which is an "excuse" for rape. There isn't one. Ever.
Flip Fold please
The horrid part is, her parents bought it. You see, she attempted suicide April 3, 2011 and the Missouri University staff couldn't get rid of her fast enough. They knew why she'd done it. They'd known why for exactly a year. Ms. Courey even tried to save herself by checking into an on-campus psychiatric center a week prior to the anniversary of the assault. The next day, during an assessment, she told her nurse she was raped by a football player. Two more doctors are made aware of the alleged assault. No one does anything and she is discharged to the motel where she attempts suicide.
Three days later, she's presented with a University Withdrawal Form in the Kansas City hospital where she was admitted because of the suicide attempt. She is transferred to a hospital in Boston. In May, she is sent a "Denial of Financial Aid Eligibility" letter. So, she's been withdrawn from school and can't go back. In June, she dies. In February 2012, the local newspaper does a story about Ms. Courey in which her parents mention the rape. University officials get copies but do nothing. Her parents are still under the illusion she was "mentally unstable" or had "borderline personality disorder", but they are curious, so in August of last year, they file for a copy of her records. Any and all records pertaining to their deceased daughter.
By February of 2013, they finally get the records. Thousands of pages. And now, they know about the rape and why the daughter they loved was gone. She was ignored. She told about the rape and no one, not one person, and all of them were in a position to say something to someone, like the police, did anything but give her sedatives and anti-depressants. Not a single footballer was questioned by the university, the coaches or the police. There's a player who knew and talked to the press. He even talked about it being more than one "man" involved. The police didn't know about it because the campus didn't report it. Her parents are understandably furious and going about trying to get to the bottom of the university's, campus security, campus health's, and police failures.
Regardless of what's found, a young woman is dead and there are people still trying to excuse the rapists! The point is, she wasn't mentally ill prior to the assault. She didn't have to die, but no one cared about anything but the Title IX statistics which are kept to
protect women. She told more than one person, no one listened and perhaps even more horribly, people knew and did nothing.
1:48 PM PT: Someone asked, so here's my background on the story. I started with the obituary and went from there. Local sources only.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/...
http://www.columbiatribune.com/...
http://www.columbiatribune.com/...
http://www.columbiatribune.com/...
And then a reporter at ESPN got this:
http://www.espn.go.com/...
and people finally started to ask questions of the University of Missouri
http://espn.go.com/...
And some scant hours after I published this, Google has articles from all over about it.