Missouri rape victim writes 1st-person account for magazine

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri teen who says she was raped by an older boy at her high school and left passed out on her porch wrote in an online woman’s magazine that the incident sent her into a spiral and she twice tried to commit suicide.

Daisy Coleman, who was 14 when she says a 17-year-old Maryville High School student plied her with alcohol and had sex with her while she was incapacitated, told her story in a first-person article posted Friday on xojane.com. In the article, she wrote about how she and her friend, a 13-year-old, were picked up at her house on Jan. 8, 2012, by the 17-year-old, who she says sexually assaulted her in his basement after she drank a clear liquid he provided her.

“Then it was like I fell into a dark abyss,” she wrote. “No light anywhere. Just dark, dense silence — and cold. That’s all I could ever remember from that night.”

Mandy Stadtmiller, deputy editor for the website, said she asked Daisy, now 16, to provide the first-person account after reading about her story.

“I thought the article was heartbreaking and very powerful in its innocence, and in its shattered innocence,” Stadtmiller said.

The case has generated new attention and an outpouring of responses on social media following a Kansas City Star investigation describing how Nodaway County prosecutor Robert Rice dismissed felony charges against the 17-year-old and another teen boy accused of recording the incident on his cellphone. The Colemans also spoke out earlier this summer to Kansas City radio station KCUR.

On Wednesday, Rice announced he was asking a court to appoint a special prosecutor to examine the evidence and decide whether charges are warranted.

The Associated Press does not generally name victims of sexual assault but is naming the Colemans because they have been granting public interviews about the case. The AP is not naming the accused boys because there are no active charges against them. Melinda Coleman didn’t immediately respond to requests Friday seeking comment about the online article.

In the xojane.com article, Daisy said the reason she chose to talk publicly is because she refuses “to be a victim of cruelty any longer.”

“I not only survived, I didn’t give up. I’ve been told that a special prosecutor is going to reopen the case now. This is a victory, not just for me, but for every girl,” she wrote.