A University of Kansas student who told police and school administrators that she had been raped is now suing both the school and the city of Lawrence, Kansas, after false reporting charges against her were dropped.
The woman claimed she had been raped at a party by an acquaintance in September 2018, suggesting she was too drunk to consent to sex at the time. As The Daily Wire previously reported, the woman initially said she didn’t want to press charges against the acquaintance and gave her phone to police before entering the Lawrence Memorial Hospital for a rape examination.
Police found text messages that indicated the woman “fabricated the rape story to effect the relationship between herself and the victim … and her ex-boyfriend,” according to Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson.
“The State believes the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing, including: the testimony of (the victim), (her ex-boyfriend), law enforcement officers, and evidence collected by law enforcement, specifically, text messages from the Defendant to her friend … indicate the sexual encounter … was consensual,” Branson said in a statement at the time.
The woman claimed she had been drinking and didn’t know how she ended up in bed with her ex-boyfriend’s best friend. She claimed to the Kansas City Star that she joked about the incident with a friend in a text message because, as the outlet claimed, she was “unable at the time to admit she had been raped.”
She only claimed the incident was rape the next day after an acquaintance “threatened to tell people about the incident,” the Star reported.
The woman threatened the acquaintance back by texting: “I’m pretty sure it was borderline rape and I have the bruises and statements to prove it so if you want to go there let’s do it,” according to court documents reviewed by the Star.
Further, text messages sent after the incident “made light of the incident and seemed to suggest the encounter was consensual and ‘just a mistake on her part,’” the Star reported. The woman told the outlet she was just trying to “downplay” the situation.
She was arrested for making a false report, but the charges were later dropped after pressure from women’s group insisted women never lie about being raped. As The Daily Wire reported, prosecutors claimed they dropped the charges because prosecuting a potential liar might hurt real victims by making them afraid to come forward.
Now the woman is suing the University of Kansas and the City of Lawrence, claiming the police department and the school treated her like a suspect and not a victim, despite a massive national culture demanding women be believed no matter the evidence. The woman claims in her lawsuit that police only pretended to investigate her allegations while actually investigating her for lying.
District Attorney Branson was voted out of office in August and replaced by a woman who used to teach the accuser in this case.