by KG MacGregor
The schedule change posed a unique challenge. Rather than enter the semester fully prepared for each class meeting, she’d have to put in extra time week by week to stay ahead of her students. There were books on Paul’s syllabus she hadn’t read in years. Lots of work but she was more than willing to do it.
A text came in from Theo asking her to call when she got a chance. That remained their habit, left over from the days of avoiding written correspondence.
Theo answered the call right away. “Can we hit the rewind button? I want it to be last Sunday morning in St. John’s again.”
It was hard to beat a lazy day in bed in a beachfront bungalow. Especially since Monday marked the start of their forced sabbatical from each other before they’d come together again on the weekend. Still the same old nonsense about needing structure so they could focus on work. Instead they talked so frequently they might as well be together.
“I have an appointment this afternoon with a young woman named Jordan Cooke,” Theo said. “Did I ever mention her?”
“It’s not ringing a bell.”
“Her name came up when I was doing interviews on campus with some of Hayley’s friends. Apparently, something similar happened to her not long after Hayley’s attack. A party where she passed out and woke up the next day in bed with some frat guy. I wanted to interview her, but she was in Europe all summer with her mom. Now she’s back and wants to talk.”
Just the mention of Hayley’s case triggered an uneasy feeling. Even though the players were now facing criminal charges, it sickened her how the university had gotten off scot-free. Gupton and Tuttle still sat at the helm, neither held accountable for their threats and refusal to take action against the players.
The worst part was Theo, who’d been angry and despondent for over a month, not only kicking herself for her own perceived missteps, but obsessed with getting revenge on the twit from Hubbard-McCaffrey for his breach of ethics.
Theo wasn’t the only one in a funk. It was only after the case ended that Celia realized how much stress she’d been under from the constant fear of retaliation. She was in no mood to go through that again. “I don’t see what good it’s going to do at this point, Theo. That ship has sailed.”
“I know, me neither. But I figured I owed her the courtesy of an interview since she followed up like I asked her to. Who knows? Maybe she’s had some time to think and wants to file a case of her own.”
And Theo could tell her she was wasting her time.
“I got some news this morning too.” Celia went on to describe her meeting with Andrew. “This can’t all be coincidence. It’s like somebody upstairs is going out of their way to make sure I’m the happiest professor on campus. Not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. But my colleagues won’t like this preferential treatment if it comes at their expense.”
“I’ve seen this kind of thing before, Celia. Institutions are notoriously afraid of litigation. Not only like the case we filed, but the one we would have filed on top of it if they’d punished you. This is why I always said you had the safest job at Harwood. They’re afraid of you. Enjoy that power. It won’t last forever.”
“Easier said than done. They’re going to turn me into a pariah.”
“And sometimes, that’s part of their master plan. They can’t retaliate, but it’s no skin off their nose if your working environment becomes so unpleasant you decide to leave on your own.”
Celia chuckled cynically. “I can tell you right now, it’ll have to get a lot more unpleasant than this.”
* * *
Jordan Cooke’s designer dress and TAG Heuer wristwatch made it clear she came from money. She was classically pretty, with long brown hair, high cheekbones and full lips painted with a tangerine gloss. According to Jalinda’s research, she was a native of suburban Boston, where her father was CEO at one of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies.
“What are you studying, Jordan?”
“Business administration. If all goes as planned, I’ll start my MBA at Harvard next year. That’s where my father went so he’s kind of insistent, if you know what I mean. But my mom went to Harwood, in case you were wondering how I ended up here.”
Though she had the confidence of a woman with money, Jordan appeared mildly nervous, twirling a sapphire ring on her right hand and swinging her foot across her knee. That made it all the more surprising she’d followed up with the interview, especially since Theo had been clear all along she wanted to talk about Hayley Burkhart. Everyone knew that case was over, so she easily could have demurred.
“Jordan, when I first contacted you, I was working on a case involving a young woman at Harwood, Hayley Burkhart. Did you know her?”
“Sort of, but not all that well. She was a Tri-Delt. I’m Chi Omega. We had a few events together, fundraisers mostly…a couple of parties maybe.” Her face fell as she dropped her gaze to her lap. “But I heard what happened to her. Everybody did. She didn’t deserve that.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“I looked for news about the case practically every day while I was gone. I was glad to see they all got arrested. But it won’t surprise me if they get off, especially since Hayley isn’t here to tell people what they did.”
Theo nodded along, recognizing the bitter tone of resignation. Women giving up in the face of what felt like insurmountable odds.
“As I’m sure you know, Jordan, I reached out to you because one of Hayley’s friends told me something similar happened to you. She said you were pretty open about it. Would it be okay for us to talk about that?”
“Sure, I assumed that’s what this was about. It wasn’t exactly a secret. I told lots of people because it pissed me off so much. It was different for me though. I wasn’t at a party with a bunch of strangers. I was on a date with this guy I knew from my economics class. Grant Rodgers. We’d gone out for Chinese food and ended up back at his frat house to watch the Hornets play Michigan. It was the tournament, so there were a lot of people crammed into their TV room.” She paused, shaking her head as if scolding herself. “And yeah, we were having a few beers. I should have known better than to take a drink somebody handed me, especially after what Hayley said happened to her. It was literally only a few weeks later, so it was still fresh on everybody’s mind. But you don’t think about it happening to you when you’re with people you trust.”
“So you’re sure that’s what happened? He gave you a drink.”
“Positive.” She looked away and narrowed her eyes, as if seeing the night again in her mind’s eye. “I got the first one out of the cooler myself. But then Grant got up and brought me the second one. I’m not saying I drink a lot or anything, but I’ve had four or five beers in one night, and I still knew what was happening. But that night…I don’t remember a thing after a couple of sips of that second beer. One of my friends was there. She said we just got up and walked down the hall. It wasn’t even halftime.”
“And then you woke up in his room the next day?”
Jordan nodded. “That’s right. All my clothes on the floor. It was obvious we’d had sex because there was a used condom hanging over the trashcan.”
“Did you talk about it with him?”
“Yelling is more like it. The son of a bitch woke up and wanted to make out, like we were in love or something. And here’s the thing that really pisses me off—if we’d dated a couple more times, I probably would have done that willingly. Instead, he had to go and be a creep about it.”
Theo had seen this dynamic play out in many of her cases. Trusting women turning disillusioned and angry to realize men had taken advantage of them.
“Your friend told me you didn’t report it to police though. Is that right?”
“What would have been the point? By that time, we’d all heard what happened to Hayley. People were talking about her like she was trash—even some of the girls in her own sorority—and the cops didn’t do anything to help her. So there I was with Grant Rodgers—as in the Ro
dgers Library, paid for by his great-grandfather. I figured I didn’t stand a chance. I didn’t want my name dragged through the mud for nothing.” She dabbed at a tear in the corner of her eye, but Theo sensed it was anger, not shame or sadness. “If I’d spoken up…hell, if all of us had spoken up, maybe Hayley wouldn’t have felt like nobody cared.”
“All of us…who does that mean?”
“We have this group on campus. We call ourselves the Surviving Sisters. Last spring there were about ten or twelve of us who came to the meetings regularly, but we have a lot more members than that. It’s a support group for rape victims on campus. Right after what happened to me, I noticed this flyer in one of the dining halls…you know, the ones where you tear off the number at the bottom. It was like a rape crisis hotline. I was just so mad…I wanted to yell at somebody. The woman who answered invited me to a meeting.”
“A meeting on campus?”
“No, turns out you have to register as an official organization for that. Bylaws, officers, the whole nine yards. I heard they tried to get a charter a couple of years ago but Harwood turned them down.” Cynically she added, “Can’t have people knowing there are rapes on campus.”
“Looks bad in the annual report, I guess.”
“Exactly. So we’re informal, like a private club. We have a cell phone we pass around, depending on whose turn it is to take the hotline calls. And we usually meet at different people’s apartments off campus.”
The recent White House directives had spurred a growth in rape crisis centers on campus. Staffed by licensed nurses and therapists, they were accountable to the university administration. Harwood didn’t have one. According to the information Jalinda had gathered for the wrongful death suit, rape victims were funneled through the student health center with no formal aftercare. Hayley had sought treatment at Celia’s urging, as opposed to what should have been an automatic referral from student health. It was no wonder a private group had risen up to fill the void.
“Did Hayley ever contact your group?”
Jordan shook her head. “Not that I know of. At least she never came to any of our meetings. But we all talked about her, especially after she killed herself. At least she had the guts to go to the police. Most of the Sisters didn’t. Like me. And the ones who did, hardly anything happened.”
It was shocking to think not one of the women in the group had seen her case pursued by law enforcement. “This support group though…it’s open to any woman who’s been sexually assaulted, whether their rapists are prosecuted or not?”
“That’s right, anybody who tears off the number and calls.”
“And no one in your group ever had charges filed against their attacker.”
“Not criminal charges, at least not that I’m aware of. A couple of them got referred to the Honor Court. That’s made up of other students, so they can’t put a rapist in jail or anything like that.”
Theo recalled the statistics Gloria had cited off the top of her head. Emory University, a Southern Ivy school across town with approximately the same enrollment as Harwood, had reported twenty-six campus rapes last year, while Harwood listed only four. If Harwood’s victims were systematically ignored or otherwise discouraged from reporting their attacks, that would go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy.
“Jordan, the women in your group…what’s their mindset? I’ve come across plenty of women who make the conscious choice to protect their privacy. They don’t want people to know them as victims, or they don’t want to share what they think of as an intimate violation. What I’m getting at is this…”
She lowered her head to force eye contact with Jordan, who’d been focused intently on twirling her sapphire ring.
“Do you think any of them would be open to talking to me if it meant fighting for the justice they didn’t get?”
Chapter Twenty
Theo extended her hand to the coed as she left. She was a light-skinned African-American with ultra-short hair and enormous hoop earrings. “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Berry. And for sharing your story. It was helpful. I appreciate how hard it can be to talk about painful experiences.”
“You can thank Jordan Cooke for my being here. She’s the one who convinced us we should tell somebody what happened to us. I just wish we could have helped Hayley.”
“We all do.”
Jasmine Berry was the twelfth Surviving Sister to share her story. A new boyfriend had ignored her pleas to stop after refusing to use a condom. Predictably, campus police declined to file a report—citing the fact she’d initially consented to sex—even though a physical examination found bruising consistent with the use of force.
When Jasmine left, Theo asked Jalinda, “Will you see if Gloria’s free for a meeting?”
In each of their interviews with the members of Jordan’s group, they’d searched for another case like Hayley’s, one so blatant it defied reason as to why it wasn’t prosecuted. Though none had actual video evidence, a handful produced copies of vague, coded taunts on social media, and in one case, an apology. All without meaningful consequences for the assailants.
The number included Kelsey Cameron, the young woman who reported being drugged and raped by a football player, and intimidated afterward by the player’s attorney. She too had joined the Surviving Sisters, a detail she’d failed to mention during her summer interview.
Gloria trudged in absent her usual gusto. “I hope you’ve called me in here to fire me. Extrapolating salary data for a quarter-million nurses is a statistical nightmare.”
“I have great faith in you, Gloria.” Theo nodded toward Jalinda, who was backing out the door. “I want you to sit in on this too. You know as much about these Surviving Sisters as I do.”
The three of them clustered around the head of the conference table, where Theo opened her file to a spreadsheet she’d created to tick off the specifics of each story she’d heard. Where it happened and under what circumstances, presence of alcohol or drugs, whether or not it was reported to police. Fifteen general indicators in all.
“Here’s the problem, Gloria. I have twelve victims—not counting Hayley Burkhart—and still no actionable case.”
“Hunh. Maybe you’re the one who needs to be fired.”
A barely audible snort escaped from Jalinda, and she looked away and pretended to whistle.
“There are two clear patterns though. First, each victim who talked to the police said the officers were sympathetic at first, but then started asking questions the women felt were geared toward getting them to implicate themselves in what happened. Was it someone they were friendly with? Were they drinking or doing drugs? Was it possible they were sending mixed signals? Saying yes—or even maybe—to any of those questions almost always resulted in the cops backing off.”
“And if the answer was no?”
“That’s just it. The questions went on till they got the answer they were looking for. Did they clearly remember every detail of the night it happened? Did they scream and try to fight back? All of them said they felt they were treated like accomplices, not victims.” She leafed through the transcripts from earlier interviews and pulled out a note she’d made of the similarities. “Of the five who reported their rape to campus police, four say they got a call from someone in administration warning them that allegations of sexual assault were very serious, capable of ruining the lives of everyone involved. A couple of them remember being advised they could be vulnerable to costly defamation suits by the accused and subject to suspension or expulsion from campus should their situation become disruptive to the university’s educational mission.” It underscored the fact that it wasn’t just athletes who were getting this kind of support.
“Isn’t that basically what Celia said they told her?” Gloria asked.
The mention of Celia jolted her. Though she’d been working on this case for almost three weeks, she hadn’t told her about it. And she wouldn’t until they’d built a solid case. No reason to get her hopes up again…or to
set her on edge about the potential blowback from Harwood.
“Yes, but their message to Celia was even more to the point. They said if she went public with allegations that were ultimately unsustained, she not only risked being fired for failing to uphold Harwood’s mission, she could be sued by the university for damaging its reputation. The only reason none of that happened was because we dared them to try.”
“Whereas with the women who got these threats, the university can say they were merely advising them of the potential consequences.”
“Or worse,” Jalinda interjected. “They could simply deny making the calls.”
“Which is what makes Celia’s audio recording of their meeting so critical to this case,” Theo said. “There’s no written record of any of these communications. In the case of Kelsey Cameron, the threat was delivered in person by an attorney who said he represented the player. Why didn’t he do the same to Hayley?”
“Because Hayley reported her assault to police and Kelsey didn’t,” Jalinda said. “So Hayley’s had to go up through channels. Her call could have come from anybody. With Kelsey, the guy who threatened her was taking his cues from what appears to be an established practice of the university, something he’d come across while representing the interests of other athletes. Same legal bullying but in an unofficial capacity.”
“Smart, Jalinda. I bet you’re absolutely right.”
It irritated Theo no end that she hadn’t been able to prove beyond a doubt the attorney was Austin Thompson. His personal car turned out to be a Nissan, not a Porsche, though they were very similar in styles.
She continued with her spreadsheet. “The women who wanted to pursue charges against their attackers were referred to the Honor Court, which is run by fellow students. Three of them followed through. Two had their claims dismissed for lack of evidence, and the third saw her attacker verbally reprimanded and placed on probation for one semester. Apparently, that’s all a rape’s worth at Harwood.”
“I pulled in Hank to do a little research of my own,” Gloria said. “In between my number crunching for the nurses, that is. In the past three years, campus police at Harwood turned over eight cases to the DA’s office for sexual assault prosecution. The suspects all had one thing in common—they weren’t students. Most were on campus visiting friends or they were locals who crashed parties. One drove a delivery truck.”