'This happened': A grad student refused to recant her rape accusation even after police arrested her

[Celerity]

and said she lied

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/29/this-happened-grad-student-refused-recant-her-rape-accusation-even-after-police-arrested-her-lying/

In the shadow of a red-brick hospital surrounded by neatly manicured grass, a University of Kansas graduate student told three police officers she had been recently raped following a night of drinking with close friends during homecoming weekend in September 2018. She said she didn’t want to press charges or file a formal police report — she just wanted to preserve any evidence in case another woman ever came forward with a similar accusation. The police asked to look at her phone. She handed it over.

In one of the messages, sent just 16 minutes before the woman met with the officers at the hospital, she called the encounter “borderline rape,” KCTV reported, and said she had “the bruises and statements to prove it.” In other texts sent to a friend in the hours after the 30-year-old woman woke up — still drunk, naked and confused in the Lawrence, Kan., apartment of her then-boyfriend’s best friend — she expressed regret and made jokes about what had happened.

“It’s gross … he’s actually really good at sex though,” she texted. A short while later, she texted the same friend: “Get here fast. I’m literally about to have a breakdown.” She told police she’d sent those messages to “downplay” what had happened, and couldn’t remember typing some of the messages sent right after the alleged attack. Her friend told police the woman’s reactions made her believe she had been raped, KCTV reported.

Those texts later became the heart of a police investigation into the woman and a criminal charge filed in January for allegedly making a false report of rape. After more than a month of criticism from sexual assault advocates, though, the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office on Monday dropped three felony charges for interfering with an officer by falsely reporting a felony crime. The county’s top prosecutors says he still believes in the “merits of this case” in a statement obtained by The Washington Post.

But attorneys for the woman, whom The Post is not naming as an alleged victim of sexual assault, say there’s overwhelming evidence she was indeed assaulted. “Our client did not ‘fabricate’ the bruises on her arms, on her legs, and on her neck,” her attorneys told the Kansas City Star in a statement last month. “Our client did not ‘fabricate’ the results of her examination, which revealed her additional, sensitive injuries.”

snip

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Life imitates art

"Unbelievable"
https://www.netflix.com/title/80153467

Unbelievable is an American drama web television miniseries starring Toni Collette, Merritt Wever, and Kaitlyn Dever. It is about a series of rapes in Washington and Colorado. The show was co-created by Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman, and Michael Chabon. All three co-creators and Sarah Timberman, Carl Beverly, and Katie Couric were executive producers. It was released on September 13, 2019, on Netflix.

The miniseries is based on the 2015 news article "An Unbelievable Story of Rape", written by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, and originally published by ProPublica and The Marshall Project. The series received critical acclaim.