THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 20, 1996 TAG: 9604200339
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
In a small voice, hovering between self-effacing humor and soft sobs, Katie Koestner returned to the College of William and Mary Friday night to recount her nationally publicized story of date rape at the college.
``All of a sudden, he was on top of me,'' she said, nearly whispering. ``People always say, `Weren't you kicking, screaming, fighting back? . . . My legs I kept straight and together. I sillily thought that would deter him. My hands I had tight around my chest to protect me. . . .
``It's so hard because I can almost see it over there,'' she said, trying to hold back tears. ``He said, `Thank you,' and then he left. I nearly felt sick to my stomach.''
It was the first time she has spoken publicly at the college about the 1990 attack. And it was one of the few times that Koestner did not face a barrage of hostility there. In her undergraduate years, sandwiches were thrown at her in a deli, eggs tossed at her dorm window. Friday, there was little backlash.
During a march that she led across campus, shouts and honks of encouragement far outnumbered catcalls from onlookers. Afterward, nearly 150 students sat on the lawn, quietly supportive, to listen to her account:
She met the student at the start of her freshman year, and they began seeing each other daily. Then he suggested they go out on their first real date, to a restaurant with ``cloth napkins.'' It was her third weekend on campus.
After dinner, she invited him to her room and they danced. She rebuffed his attempts to undo the rhinestone buttons on the back of her dress. Suddenly, complaining he was overheated, he took off everything but his shorts and socks.
He pressed his lips against her and tried to lift her dress. Again, she said no. ``I thought, `He's sober and smart, he'll understand it if I explain it to him completely.' ''
She said premarital sex was against her religious beliefs. He responded: ``I think if your God is so great, he'll forgive us for one time.'' She said they barely knew each other. He said: ``But Katie, I'm very good. No one's complained before.''
Angry, he said he was going to sleep and lie down on her bed. ``Maybe some of you would say, `Get out,' and make a scene,'' she said. ``But I was scared. I didn't know what would happen next.'' So she sat in the corner of the room, trying to stay awake.
At 5, he awoke and told her to go to sleep. Feeling tired and sick, she relented and he raped her.
After the attack, she filed a sexual assault complaint on campus. The college found him guilty. The penalty for the man, who was never identified, was to be barred from visiting all dorms but his own.
She said an administrator, no longer with the college, told her: ``He's a very nice man. He understands it's wrong. If you two could work through this little tiff . . . and get back together in the spring, that would be very nice.''
``I couldn't believe it,'' Koestner said. ``He was guilty, and he was not allowed in my room, and that would solve it.''
``I do understand very well why people are silent about rape,'' Koestner, 23, told the crowd. ``If you're silent, no one will ever tell you it's your fault. No one will ever take his side. Your mother won't ever tell you, `You won't get a husband; you're damaged goods.' . . .
But, she added, ``If you're silent, nothing will ever change.'' ILLUSTRATION: Koestner
KEYWORDS: DATE RAPE by CNB