Victim in $10M Rape Lawsuit Against Virginia Wesleyan Testifies

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — The victim at the center of a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Virginia Wesleyan College took to the stand Monday describing what she called five hours of brutal rape.

The victim, known as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, is suing the school for negligence, and is blaming them for creating an environment that made it easy for sexual assaults. The lawsuit claims that Jane Doe was lured to a party, drugged and sexually abused in her freshman year back in August of 2012.

Doe choked back tears as she described the attack in court for an hour and 20 minutes. As Doe testified, the man accused in the lawsuit, known as Robert Roe, sat 12 feet from her.

Roe and Doe had been at an unsanctioned party at the college thrown by a Resident Adviser, who Doe’s side says was an employee of the college.

At the party, Doe took a shot, the only drink she said she had.

“I immediately felt nauseous,” Doe said in court. “I was seeing double vision, and woozy. I knew something was wrong. My friends and I left and I walked them back to their dorm rooms.”

She then testified that after her friends were in their room, she returned to her own. While in a hallway on the way to her room, Doe said she felt an arm around her waist. It was Robert Roe’s.

“He took me back to his room. I thought I was going to pass out, and have never felt anything like that, and I have never lost control of my body,” Doe said.

Once in the room, Doe said Roe took off his clothes and then hers.

“He was kissing me,” Doe said.

Doe then described 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, 35 to 40 minutes and another 30 minutes of different sessions of what she called all types of “unwanted sex.”

Doe said Roe kept asking her, “does that feel good?” She would respond, “no,” and insisted that she didn’t leave because she was incapacitated.

“This went on all night, and finally at 5:20 a.m. he fell asleep and I left the room,” Doe said.

Doe said she knew it was 5:20 a.m. because that’s what the clock on the night stand said. She said that at that point, her head hurt from having it slammed against the headboard of the bed.

The trial began with opening statements last week.

On Monday, Jane Doe’s mother offered new details of conversations she said that she and her daughter had about the alleged incident:

She gave me a call and said a couple of girls had incidents. She didn’t want to tell me that it was her. She called me again in late September and I asked her ‘did you get raped?’ and she answered ‘yes mom, I did.’ She was upset and crying. I was so overwhelmed. I tried to calm her down and get information out of her. She did not want to leave the school because she loved her professors. She did not give me details. The worst part, was that she told me she was raped over the phone.”

During this testimony, Roe was shaking his head “no,” in disagreement with what she was saying.

Jane Doe’s mother also said that more information came out around Thanksgiving after that and “then more information came out at Christmas time, that he made her eat her own feces.”

The defense for Robert Roe has said that the sex was consensual. His lawyers have also claimed that Jane Doe had sex 10 days after the alleged attack.

Jane Doe’s mother also said, “After this incident, her personality changed. She couldn’t sleep; she had panic attacks. She would hyperventilate and clench her fists to the point of having white knuckles.”

Marea Hyman, associate director of student counseling at Virginia Wesleyan, also took the stand Monday. She acknowledged she only shares anonymous sexual assault statistics at the end of the year.

Jane Doe reportedly went to Hyman about the August 2012 attack in October of that year.

“Jane Doe did tell me she recalled waking up feeling sick to the stomach,” Hyman said. “She was concerned about what people would think about her.”

Hyman also said, “She did tell me she began to question herself about why she didn’t fight back harder. She was under the influence. She had shots of liquor and wondered if she had been drugged.”

As Doe sues Virginia Wesleyan College, the college is suing Roe. The college also won a motion to receive five percent of any of her proceeds because they had to investigate her claim of being a virgin. The court believes she was not.

Roe has apologized for any misinterpretations he had on Doe’s desires to be with him. He was expelled from the school after the incident, but after protesting the classification of his departure, the school changed it to “voluntarily withdrew.” That’s when Doe filed the suit against the school claiming negligence. After that, Doe also left the school.

Robert Roe’s attorneys will cross examine Jane Doe tomorrow. The defense will try to poke several holes in her story, including the failure to report anything about it.

Source: wavy.com wavy.com

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