Stop the Violence Against Women Week began on Monday, March 27, with a presentation entitled, “Date Rape: A College Experience,” given by Katie Koestner, a date rape survivor.
Koestner recounted her experience to a mostly female crowd in McGuinn 121. Koestner, who was raped by a close friend at the College of William and Mary in 1991, now spends her time speaking to high school and college students around the country about her experience.
Koestner’s was the first case where the term “date rape” was used, which landed her on the cover of Time Magazine.
Koestner was a freshman at William and Mary when the rape occurred. She had met a boy named Peter, who would later be her attacker, during orientation. She became acquainted with him soon after she got to school and realized they were in the same chemistry class. She classified their relationship as “hanging out.” She explained that at some schools you have “dating,” at others you have “hooking-up,” at some schools they call it “shacking,” at others “mashing,” but what she and Peter were doing was “hanging out.” They saw each other every day for a while and one day Peter suggested that it would be nice if they went on a real date. They went to a very fancy French restaurant across the street from campus. The dinner went well except for a few small things that he said that made Koestner uneasy.
She stated that the one thing she remembers about dinner was “the small knot that began to appear in my stomach.”
After dinner they walked back to campus and Koestner invited Peter into her room to “dance.” According to Koestner, after three songs, he started to unbutton her dress. This made her uncomfortable and she pushed him away and said, “You know, Peter, ever since I was about two to three years old I could completely dress and undress with absolutely no assistance whatsoever.”
Koestner stated that it was at this point when he walked to the other side of the room and proceeded to take off all of his clothes except his boxers, with the excuse that he was just a little bit hot. Koestner said that she was thinking at the time that “there must be quite a temperature difference between his end of the room and my end of the room, or maybe this is just some weird college dating ritual where boys come to your room and take off their clothes and say they are hot, or maybe I’m just the most naive woman ever.”
Since then, she has decided that the definition of naive must be “you think that you can like someone, be alone in a room with them and not have sex.” Then she said, “I liked him ... I liked him a lot and I want you to remember that.”
In order to defuse the awkward situation, she decided that the best idea to was to start a pillow fight, which, she said, did divert their attention from the obvious awkwardness of the situation for a while. She said, “he was laughing, I was laughing, until I ended up on the pink carpet and stopped laughing.”
Koestner stated that he started saying things such as: “you’re thinking too much, just relax and enjoy it, come on, come on, come on ...” She recalled that she struggled and, after awhile, he let go of her. Koestner then stood up and he tried to persuade her to have sex with him. She said that when she kept refusing, he got very angry and fell asleep in her bed.
Koestner said that she spent the entire night huddled in a corner trying to stay awake. Peter woke when the sun came in the window around 5 a.m. He saw her sitting in the corner and asked why she wasn’t asleep. She explained to him that they had a huge fight that night and she was very upset. He said he was very sorry that she didn’t get any sleep and that it would never happen again.
Koestner recalled that she was so tired that she began to believe him and allowed herself to begin to fall asleep.
She said that as she was falling asleep she felt him kissing her on the neck and she asked him to stop but he did not. Koestner said that she remembers being pushed up against the wall, and him being on top of her.
People have since asked her why she didn’t fight back. She tells them; “Well, I bit a hole through my cheek, it left a scar that I had to show the dean at my trial. My hands were as tight as fists over my chest to protect myself and my legs were straight together because I had foolishly believed that it was the best way to keep him away. Do you think that was good enough?”
When he was finished, Peter got up and left. Koestner said that she didn’t tell anyone what had happened for days. Her roommate was out of town that weekend and she said she just tried to forget it.
Eventually, Koestner stated, she told her roommate, who encouraged her to talk to the school about her options. Since she waited so long, there was no physical evidence to collect for a trial, so Koestner had a university hearing instead.
Koestner won the hearing and afterwards, she suffered insults and poor treatment from people who didn’t believe her. Peter was kicked out of school, Koestner said, for beating his next girlfriend, but he was later readmitted.
Koestner said that that one night changed her life and she will not stop speaking about it, no matter how difficult it is for her. Her wish is “to have a day with absolutely no rape.”
Be the first to comment on this article!