ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 25, 1996 TAG: 9611250162
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CASSOPOLIS, MICH.
SOURCE: Associated Press
The 18-year-old woman couldn't remember what happened after she went to a college Halloween party. Then other students started telling her about the videotape going around.
Investigators say five members of the Southwestern Michigan College basketball team, including one from Virginia, raped the woman and videotaped themselves in the act.
The woman, a student, had passed out after drinking at the party at an apartment house near campus, authorities said.
``She did not have any recall of what had happened,'' prosecutor Scott Teter said. ``Other students who had seen the tape told her, `Did you know there is a tape of you being circulated?'''
Teter said the eight-minute tape seized from one of the men clearly identifies the attackers and shows the sex acts were not consensual - the woman was drunk and ``physically helpless.''
``There's no part of that tape that is not graphic. It's awful,'' Teter said Thursday after a hearing in the case was postponed until Dec. 20.
The athletes, all freshmen, were expelled from the two-year junior college after their Nov. 7 arraignment. Authorities said the five are not cooperating with the search for a sixth man on the tape who is believed to be a friend of the athletes.
The woman didn't talk to police until Nov. 4, three days after the attack, when prosecutors say she began suffering complications from her injuries.
``We definitely are claiming it was consensual,'' defense attorney George Howard told the Kalamazoo Gazette. ``The fact there were injuries does not mean it was a criminal act. Injuries happen sometimes during sex.''
Charged with first-degree sexual misconduct, the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan, are Donald Thomas of Chicago and Sherman Williams of Detroit, both 18. They also were charged with aiding and abetting first-degree sexual misconduct, as were Ortez Glaze, 18, and Loren Johnson, 19, both of Chicago, and Edward Seward, 19, of Chesapeake, Va.
Glaze, Johnson and Seward were also charged with third-degree sexual misconduct.
Johnson's sister, Katie Curry, defended her brother after his arrest.
``He's here on scholarship to play ball,'' she said. ``Why would he mess up his chance to go to college? He's never had any trouble like this before.''
The college has 4,000 students. It is in Dowagiac, a town of about 6,100 residents 90 miles east of Chicago.
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