S25 Ep1: Chapter 1: Something is Terribly Wrong

Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses topics that may be upsetting. This season discusses sexual, physical, and psychological violence. Please consume the following episodes with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each individual episode, please visit the episode notes. Opinion shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of broken cycle media. The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. Thank you so much for listening. Every day on college campuses across the United States, students wake up hoping to learn, grow, and redefine who they are, often living away from home for the first time. But for far too many young people, these same campuses become the site of trauma that will alter the course of their lives forever. Sexual violence on college campuses is sadly not a new issue. It is not rare, and despite decades of advocacy, federal reform, educational campaigns, and supposed institutional safeguards, students continue to be harmed at staggering rates. Yet the systems we are told will protect students, title 9 offices, student conduct boards, campus police, and administrators, often end up protecting institutions, not survivors. This season of something was wrong is one of the most urgent investigations we've ever produced. Because behind every statistic is a young person, someone's child, navigating one of the most vulnerable moments in their life, in a system that was supposed to protect them and didn't. We've spent months speaking with students, parents, witnesses, professors, and experts, reviewing transcripts, title 9 documents, legal filings, and university communications. What we found was not a series of isolated incidents, but a pattern, a pattern of minimization, of institutional self-protection, of retraumatization disguised as procedure, of students being harmed not only by their perpetrators, but by the very systems designed to ensure their safety. And when survivors did come forward, many face scrutiny, disbelief, or retaliation, while the alleged perpetrators faced little to no accountability. Something was wrong season 25 is about what happens when universities failed to uphold civil rights protections. It's about what happens when young survivors try to do everything right and are still left to fight alone. It's about the parents who receive the call that they often feared, and the systems that responded with bureaucracy instead of care. It's also about the power of speaking up, and the courage it takes to do so when the cost is high. But before we begin this season, it's important to understand the law that sits at the center of so many of these stories, title 9. Title 9 was passed in 1972 as part of the education amendments. The law states, quote, no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. End quote. It's only 37 words long, but those words were meant to guarantee that every student in the United States could access their education without discrimination based on sex. Most people know title 9 because of sports, and while expanding athletic opportunities for women and girls was a major milestone, title 9's protections reached far beyond athletics. Over time, through guidance of the Department of Education and Decades of Advocacy from Survivors, title 9 became the primary federal law requiring schools and programs that receive federal funding to address sexual harassment, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, stalking, and other forms of sex based harm. The idea is simple. If a student experiences discrimination, sexual violence, or sexual harassment, and it affects their education, the school or federally funded program has a legal obligation to respond promptly, effectively, and in a way that ensures that everyone has equal access to educational opportunities. But as many survivors know, the reality is often far more complicated. It's been nearly 50 years since the passage of title 9, the landmark civil rights law prohibiting sex based discrimination at federally funded schools, including in athletic programs. But violations still exist. Schools often provide better opportunities and benefits for boys. Devastatingly, sexual violence on college campuses is not rare. According to Rain, female college students between the ages of 18 and 24 are three times more likely to experience sexual violence than women in general. Rain also indicates that male students between the ages of 18 and 24 are, quote, 78 percent more likely than non-students of the same age to be a victim of rape or sexual assault. And quote, meanwhile, national research shows that about one in five undergraduate women will experience sexual assault during their college years, and that, quote, college women in their first year have reportedly been at the highest risk for sexual assault compared to other college women after their first year, end quote. That's why the first months of a student's freshman year of college is often referred to as the red zone. Research cited by the American Psychological Association found that 50 percent of college sexual assaults occur during the red zone. LGBT QIA students face even higher rates of quote, students who identify as sexual minority men are nine times as likely to have experienced sexual assaults as heterosexual male students and students who identify as sexual minority women are twice as likely as heterosexual female students to have been sexually assaulted. End quote. And yet more than 90 percent of students are estimated to never formally report their assault. Survivors frequently describe feeling overwhelmed, confused, or afraid they won't be believed. Others fear retaliation, social backlash, or the emotional toll of a lengthy bureaucratic process. For the students who do step forward, their experiences can be inconsistent and at times deeply retraumatizing. Many survivors end up leaving classes, changing majors, moving off campus, or even withdrawing from school entirely, while the alleged perpetrators often continue their education without interruption. An analysis by American Sports News program outside the lines illustrates that in recent years, quote, college athletes were about three times more likely than other students to be accused of sexual misconduct or domestic violence in complaints made at Power 5 Conference Schools. End quote. In 2021, 16,754 students across eight academic campuses participated in an online study that included questions about sexual harassment victimization by a faculty staff member or by a peer sense enrollment at their institution of higher education. Across institutions, 19 percent of students reported experiencing faculty staff perpetrated sexual harassment and 30 percent reported experiencing peer perpetrated sexual harassment. This isn't just painful, it undermines the core purpose of Title IX itself. For most students, the first time they hear the term Title IX is after something traumatic has already happened. They're 18 or 19, away from home, terrified, and suddenly confronted with deadlines, investigators, and policies they've never seen before. But Title IX does give students rights. They have the right to affair and timely process. They have the right to supportive measures, things like counseling access, academic adjustments, or a no contact directive. They have the right to have someone with them in meetings, and they have the right to report without fear of retaliation. The challenge is that each school is required to adopt and publish their own Title IX policies and procedures. Some are clear and survivor centered. Others are confusing, outdated, or written in ways that make the process nearly impossible to navigate without help. Knowing your rights isn't just important. It can be the difference between receiving support and being pushed out of your education entirely. But those rights do not exist in a vacuum. They're shaped and sometimes limited by court decisions. The Department of Education adopted new Title IX regulations that took effect in August of 2020. The rules required live hearings with cross-examination, in collegiate-level sexual misconduct cases, narrowed the definition of actionable sexual harassment, and added more due process protections for accused students. The new rules are a new blueprint for students to file allegations wherever they attend school, but they also increase protections for students and faculty accused of sexual assault on campus. As part of that, the government's requiring colleges and universities to hold hearings and cross-examinations involving both the accused and the accuser. Then, in 2022, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that dramatically altered what damages survivors can seek through civil lawsuits under Title IX. In the case Cummings vs. Premier Rehab, the court determined that emotional distress damages are not available under certain federal civil rights laws, including Title IX. For many survivors, emotional harm is the most significant impact of sexual violence, affecting their mental health, safety, sense of belonging, and academic future. After this ruling, students bringing Title IX cases in civil court can no longer seek compensation for that emotional injury. Some legal experts have described this as a major setback, reducing one of the few avenues survivors had to pursue accountability outside their university. It also means schools may face fewer consequences when they fail to protect students or mishandle reports. This ruling did not receive widespread public attention, yet it fundamentally changed the options available to survivors and their families. Understanding this shift is essential to understanding the stakes of every story told this season. Title IX was meant to ensure equal access to education, but when schools failed to protect survivors or when the systems become more focused on liability rather than student safety, that promise is broken. The survivors you'll hear from this season and their loved ones stepped into these processes believing the system would help them. Instead, many found confusion, indifference, or active harm. Their stories highlight how far Title IX's implementation has drifted from its purpose and how urgently change is needed. The Utah Valley students' lawsuit claims her own school didn't help her when she reported she was raped in 2019 because her alleged assailant was a student at the University of Utah. The second university that she says failed to act, that is until unified police started investigating. The suit claims both universities violated Title IX, the federal law that governs how colleges must respond to reports of sexual misconduct. It's hard to understand why. Why when giving the opportunity to help somebody who desperately needed it they just chose not to. By understanding what Title IX is, how it works and where it fails, we can better understand the courage it takes for young people to speak up, and the work still required to make campuses safe for all students, which is why we'll also be interviewing experts to inform on the current state of Title IX and what college students need to know about their safety and rights. I'm Tiffany Reese and this is something was wrong. Oh, you think you know me? You don't know me well at all. I call my mom when she says hey, they call me up on the telephone now they're wrong. I know that it's not their fault. I know that they don't know me well at all. You don't know anybody. You don't know anybody till you talk to someone. Oh, so on. Today we begin chapter one of our season with survivor Luna, whose real name is being protected for her privacy and safety. Luna was a bright empathetic first year nursing student on the East coast who was excited to begin the next chapter of her life when she began college fall of 2023. She grew up in a small town extremely close with her mom and dad who describe her as a ray of sunshine and someone who brings warmth into every room she enters. Luna chose her college because it was close to home, had a strong nursing program and felt safe. To her, it seemed like a place where she could make new friends, learn independence and step into the adult life she had worked so hard for. But just a few months into her freshman year, everything changed. After what she thought would be a casual movie night with a trusted friend that other students described as well liked and one of the girls, Luna found herself leaving his dorm room in shock, injured, assaulted and trying to make sense of what had happened. Luna followed every instruction given to her, report to the RA, seek medical care, participate in the university's title nine process, trust the system. But instead of finding safety, clarity and accountability, Luna and her parents found themselves in a maze of inconsistent communication, confusing policies, long delays, and institutional betrayals that ultimately failed to protect her. Their story is not an anomaly, it is part of a national crisis, and it raises questions that every student and parent sending a child to college deserve to ask. What duty does a university have to its students? Who does a title nine office really serve? How many young survivors are quietly forced out of their own education while their perpetrators remain? And what would it take for these institutions to finally put students' safety above their own reputation? These stories are painful, infuriating and powerful. Hi, I'm Luna. The reason that I decided to speak out about my story is because I think that assault is something that is still really taboo in society. A lot of college-age women, they have a hard time sharing their story, it can feel really isolating, but I survived and I just want to put my story out there in case it can help somebody in the way that this podcast has been helpful to me. I'm an only child, I grew up with just my parents. My dad was my very first best friend. He actually has multiple sclerosis, so as long as I can remember, my father has been disabled. I think something that is really misunderstood about adults with disabilities is they don't have the ability to think for themselves. I think a lot of people assume just because somebody is disabled, they are not able to make their own decisions and make their needs known and promote their own independence, but my dad has been an absolutely stand-up father. He's been unemployed because he's disabled, so I never had to have a babysitter when I was a kid, so he was a stay-at-home dad and still is. My mom is a nurse, she works with the elderly, so I've grown up being exposed to a lot of medical stuff, seeing the nurses interact with my dad when he was in a really hard place and needing help. It was really inspiring to me because I think that empathy is a skill that a lot of people don't have anymore, but I do believe that a lot of medical professionals do. I kind of knew from a pretty young age that that was something that I wanted to do. I've always wanted to help people. I know every nurse says that, but I've always wanted to help people and make a difference. I went to a really small high school. I think there were like 20-something people in my class. Wow, like your graduating class? Yeah, you know everybody and you know everybody's business. I had kind of a difficult time in high school. I think people were not the friendliest, and that's where that empathy comes in. I knew when I wanted to go to college, I wanted to kind of get away from my hometown and those people. I also wanted to go somewhere that had a good nursing program. I just felt in my heart that that was the path that I needed to follow, so I kept that in mind when I was making my decision to apply to different colleges. I think the things I was considering the most when I was looking for college was the distance between the college and my hometown. I wanted to get away a little bit, but also I wanted to be able to commute if I needed to because I have never lived away from home before. Anytime I ever had sleepovers or parties as a kid, it was always at my house. So I never really spent a lot of time away from home. Hi, I'm Luna's mom. I'm Luna's father. We have an amazing daughter. Luna is just super great. She's going to be 21. She's in her junior year at college. Time is flying by. She's always happy, so optimistic, empathetic. She's in a nursing program and it's evident since she was a little little kid that nursing was her future. She's always been a caregiver. When she was six months old, I was diagnosed with MS and I was forced to stop working, so I have been blessed to be a stay-at-home dad with Luna and really just got to see her grow and become this incredible woman. She also really spoke very highly of y'all and I think that having y'all support, it sounds like has meant a lot to her and really helped her throughout this process and not everybody has that. I'm very honored that I get to connect with y'all as well. I'm curious what your guys' hopes were for her as she left for college. Lots of hopes that she would really flourish, meet incredible people and learn how to be independent. Beginning of her young adulthood, it was just so exciting and it was devastating to she's our only child. Being empty nesters was really hard, but luckily she chose a school which is only about 45 minutes from home, so that was great. We were just so excited for her to begin this journey of her life. The whole college experience. Yeah, you prep yourself their whole life for this moment. They kick their school and you're so excited for them, but also you feel this whole and your stomach like oh my god, they're leaving. It's really hard. It's a hard time. I think you took it harder than I did. To me, this is what my goal was for her whole life, was for her to graduate high school and go on to college and to get a degree and to be able to be self-sufficient and not have to rely on anybody ever be a strong independent woman. That's what I wanted. I was very happy for her when she left. The transition from high school to college was very emotional. More than I thought it was going to be, I thought I was going to be able to tough it out a little more than I did, but I'm a very sensitive person and I knew it was going to be a challenge. I actually remember the two nights before I moved into college. I had a complete mental episode. I was bawling and I was like, I can't do this. I don't want to go. I ended up sleeping in my parents' bed with them that one final night. I think that was my way of letting go of the past 18 years and flying the nest. I was definitely homesick the first few days. I didn't know anybody. I was the only one from my little boonies town and nobody even heard of the town that I came from. That was kind of isolating in itself and they couldn't even find me on the map. Do you feel like it impacted people's impression of you? Definitely. The small town girl is definitely a very real stereotype and I think I was placed into that subgroup without even realizing it. I had never even met my roommate until I got there. I get a blind date but a lot worse because you're living with them. It was a really tough transition. If I didn't stay distracted, then I would get really in my head and I felt like I was missing out on things that were going on at home. My parents don't do a lot of fun stuff anymore but I missed having dinner with them at the table and I missed sitting on the couch with the cats and the dog and just watching TV with them and living like 30 seconds from my best friend. I tried to stay as busy as I could to try to keep my mind occupied. The thing that I figured out that worked the best was actually not talking to my parents as much because if I talk to them, I wanted to literally jump through the phone. Eventually I started to branch out a little bit more and when I started to take my classes on a regular basis and eased into the semester, I made a lot of really nice friends. I built my own little niche which made me feel a lot less isolated. I think the easiest way that I made a lot of friends was going to the RA hosted events. I don't do that anymore. Now that I have an established friend group, the very first one that I ever went to, it was an activity. It was like a build a bear thing that they were doing and they had brought a bunch of little empty bears and a bunch of stuffing. We all went to the common area and we were stuffing these bears. I met my present day roommate that night actually. It was like, I want to say the 10th or 11th day of school. She was sitting on the couch by herself and I approached her and I was like, hey, can I sit next to you? We immediately hit it off and we spent the rest of the night laughing. The roommate that I got randomly paired with, we were on completely opposite schedules. I was getting up at the crack of dawn every day and she had a lot of evening classes and so we would wake each other up. We were in each other's space a lot and I was always gone on the weekends and going home. She's from far away so she was always kind of lonely when I would leave. So about three weeks into school, we both went to the room director and we said that we wanted to switch rooms and I ended up roaming with Jamie throughout my freshman year who I made friends with that night on the couch when we were stuffing the bears. My friend and I worked so much better together. I had definitely established a routine and I knew who I liked and who I didn't want to hang out with. I had people that I was sitting with at lunch and I had friends in my classes. We would even go off campus to get coffee together. So I was off to a good start and I felt like I finally eased into the routine of things and I didn't dread going back to school on Sunday night because I knew that I had a friend group there that I could talk to if I started to get sad or anxious. So that made a huge difference for me. Prior to starting college, had you ever heard of Title IX, did your school inform you when you enrolled should an assault or something of that nature happen? These are the protocols. No, I had never heard of Title IX. I think the small town thing really plays a huge part in it. Nothing ever happened in my town. And I guess I never thought that assaults or any kind of Title IX violation would be a prevalent thing in college. When I applied and I got in and I even toured the college before I gave my deposit, never once did I get introduced to anybody that was the facilitator of the Title IX. I never knew what it was. I didn't know that they had parameters in place for that kind of situation. So I was blissfully unaware at that point honestly. When did you meet Cody? I met Cody actually the third day of school. He was friends with my roommate first before he met me. I remember the first time I ever interacted with him. I had an 8am class and I went back to my dorm after and I knocked out for an hour. I was exhausted and I woke up and he was in my dorm with my roommate. I've seen him on campus in passing but I've never talked to him. But he was really nice. He talked to me for a second. He said he was sorry for disturbing me in my nap. He was from Florida. So I thought that was interesting. I didn't necessarily think it was odd. But I was like, why would he come from Florida to this little town and this little college that is really only known for nursing? But other than that, I thought he was really friendly and really warm and outgoing. Maybe the guys in college are a little different than the ones you deal with in high school. He left the room and I was like, oh, that was a good interaction. Because of my roommate, we started to be affiliated with each other a little bit more and everything unfolded from there. I definitely interacted with him a lot more on a regular basis after that first interaction. He came up to me a couple times while I was having dinner with my friend and he would be like, hey, how's it going? And he'd sit with us for a few minutes and we would eat together. He would sit with me in the library once in a while and we would do homework together. I lived on a girls' floor during my first year and his floor was the first floor and I was on the third floor. He would be up on our floor a lot because he'd be friendin a lot of the women on our floor. So I just kind of got used to him being around and on the times that I would talk to him. He was very emotionally open. He would tell me things about his personal life that I wouldn't normally tell somebody. He immediately told me that he had three sisters and I was like, wow, this guy has grown up around a lot of women and no wonder he's befriending all these women. He's very sensitive, very emotional, very gentle, he had talked to me a lot about spending a lot of time with his grandparents. That was part of the reason that he came up to where he is. We spent a lot more time together, not really so much one-on-one leading up to the assault and then the night of, but anytime I had hung out with him, he was always really fun and he would dance a lot. He was loud. He was very flamboyant. I liked him a lot. What did your other friends think of him? My roommate actually really had a thing for him, so she always spoke really highly of him and she would talk about him a lot and she would talk to me about him and I would just be like, yeah, he's really nice. A lot of my friends thought the same thing. We all really liked the fact that he was around women and grew up with sisters. That made us feel a lot more comfortable around him. My friend and I, we would go to the communal showers together and we would talk all we were showering and she'd come back to my room in like her bathroom and I'd be in my towel and he would be in my room or he'd be on the girls floor and we'd walk past him in our pajamas and nobody ever felt unsafe around him. We all thought he was one of the girls. As the end of September approached, my school does something called the first-year seminar. It's a thing that we do where all the first-year students get together and we get paired into these groups and we have to come up with some kind of project. It was an education program working with students with special needs and making special needs education more accessible. That was our group. He wasn't in my group but his group had been right next to my group. Proximity wise, we were very close to each other during those couple of days that our groups were working together. One night he had invited me to come hang out in his dorm with my friend and his roommate. Her and I were like, okay, sure. After we spent the day doing our project, we went to his dorm and we just hung out in there and it was really fun. I remember sitting on his bed. He's very tall and I'm very not tall. He had kind of like put himself between my legs while I was sitting on the bed. My feet were dangling off the bed and he was standing like between my legs, talking to me. Looking back, I'm like, what the heck. But I never thought that was weird because he was very friendly, very warm and I'm kind of the same way. Before us were hanging out and my friend was really hitting it off with his roommate. He was asking me about my personal life, my home life. If I had had a boyfriend before, I didn't really think anything of it because he had been so open from the beginning about his life and his girlfriends in the past. So I didn't feel like I had to keep anything from him. It got to be like nine or ten o'clock and I was like, okay, I'm going to go back upstairs now to my room. I'm going to go take a shower and get ready to go to bed. I went upstairs and before I was going to get in the shower, he texted me. Something along the lines of like, hey, I really like you. I think you should come back. There's something that I want to talk to you about. I was like, oh, that's nice. And I had a feeling that he liked me. But I didn't really know if I liked him like that. But I was totally open to figuring it out as time went on and spending time with him more. I did think he had really good energy and that was attractive to me. So I was like, what the heck? I actually told my roommate, hey, I'm going to go back down there. He wants to talk to me. And she was so excited. She was like, tell me everything when you come back up. So I went downstairs. We were sitting together on his bed and his roommate had gone somewhere. I'm not really sure where he went. But that was the first time I'd been truly alone with him. It was really innocent. We were sitting on his bed and he was like, I just really want to tell you that I really think you're amazing. I think you're beautiful. You know, I want to see where things go. I hope that you feel the same way. I've never really met anybody like you before. You have a great heart saying all the right things. And I'm in a vulnerable spot. First month of college, I'm away from home. These are all people I don't know. I'm single. I'm doing this for the plot at this point. I think he was just shooting for the stars here. But he actually kissed me that night. And it was fully consensual. It was fine. It was very light. It was just a quick kiss. And I was like, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes in the future. I'm going to go back upstairs now because it was getting late. It was like 11 at that point. I'll text you in the morning and we'll go from there. He gave me a hug and he'd walk me back up to my room. And that was it. And I took a shower and I told my friend. I told her everything. I wasn't really sure if I liked him at that point. I was thinking about it. And I was like, huh, maybe I do like him. Then I went to bed. This was a Thursday night. I went home the next morning after my class on Friday. So I didn't see him. He went to his family's house for the weekend. So he wasn't on campus and I was home. But we were actually texting like crazy throughout the entire weekend. And he was being really affectionate. He was calling me, you know, my love. And I don't think it was that serious. But he's like, I can't wait to see you again. I can't wait to like hold you. And I'm like, okay, this is kind of getting a little wild. But when I see him again, I'm just going to tell him to tone it down. You're coming off a little too strong. But I think people are kind of excited. I totally understand where he was coming from. We were texting all weekend and talking about making plans to hang out on Sunday night when I got back to campus. We were going to watch a movie in his dorm room. I had the full belief that his roommate was going to be there because his roommate was always there. And I had talked to him a million times too. He's a really nice guy. I was like, this is a good way for me to know if we're vibing together or not seeing if this could be something or if he's just really going to be a good friend of mine. And I got back to campus on Sunday. I was supposed to go to his room earlier in the night actually like five or six. But my roommate and I decided impulsively that we were going to bleach her hair, which was insane. So that took us two hours. So I didn't end up hanging out with him until like eight or nine to watch a movie. It was already really dark out. It was really cold. It was October. I know it's going to be at late night. I told my roommate, I'm going to go watch a movie with this guy. I'll let you know how it goes. And she was teasing me. She was like, oh, I hope you have fun. I was excited. I was wearing a big baggy pink sweatshirt and I had black shorts on and crocs. Nothing fancy. I was in like my lounge around clothes. He had been texting me and telling me to hurry up. I finally told him I'm going to come downstairs and he was like, okay. And then he did this weird thing. Him and his roommate used to smoke a lot in their room together. Anytime one of the friends would come into the dorm, they would have them like shake the door knob so that they knew it wasn't an array trying to come in or something. So I texted him, do you want me to like knock on the door? Just come in and he was like, actually, if you could shake the door knob. And I found out later what that was about. I just come down with my phone because my phone has my ID in the back of it where I scan into my floor because all of our floors are key card protected so that no random strangers can get into our dorm building. So I go down there and I like wiggle the door knob and he opens the door and I notice that his roommate's there. And so I'm like, okay, cool. And he's like, hey, come on in. But then I noticed that his roommate was putting on his coat to go somewhere. I was like, I was healing and he's like, yeah, he's going out with some of our classmates. And I was like, oh, okay, whatever. Didn't think anything weird about it. I don't think he would do anything wrong. This is when it all started to get really weird feeling on my stomach started to feel kind of funny because he said to his roommate, can you lock the door on your way out? And I was like, why would you lock the door? The way that the door is set up in our dorm room is there's no lock on the outside at all. If somebody was outside and I was in their locked in, they would not be able to get me unless they had the key. And I would have to physically get up and like unlock the door to get myself out of there. I think that's really important because I knew that that was the way the door worked. And so that felt a little weird for him to like be locking us in his room. And I was like, oh, I hope this guy doesn't think we're going to do anything because it's not going to happen. We hop up on the bed and he's like, you can get comfortable. The TV was propped up on one of like the built-in closet things. So it was in a good spot where it was angled towards the bed. And the way that the room was set up was his bed was pushed against the wall. It's a little twin extra long mattress dorm bed. And then there was a space in the middle. And then his roommate's bed was on the other side. The same kind of set up pushed against the wall. At the foot of the bed, there was a desk with a big built-in shelf. The only way to get off the bed is to physically get off the side of the bed. You can't go off the head of the bed because it's against the wall. You can't get off the foot of the bed. And then he had this rolling shower caddy thing at the head of the bed off to like the side. And that's where he would keep his TV remote and put his phone in there, his snacks and whatever else. The room was pretty set up where the only open space was in the middle. So he tells me to get comfortable. Had I nervous because last time I was on this bed, he told me he liked me. I'm like, what is tonight going to hold? He had the LED lights on. So it was kind of dark in there. But I was like, we're watching a movie. I don't need the lights on anyway, whatever. He puts me on the inside of the bed. Now I'm squished against him in the wall. I'm a very small person. I'm five foot zero and I weigh like a hundred pounds. And he sticks to, I'm just gonna sit here because he's bigger and you want more space. And I can turn my body a certain way. I'll be fine. He was like, what do you want to watch? And I was like, oh, I don't know what do you like? And he was like, no, what do you like? I'm a horror movie junkie. I'm a total adrenaline junkie through and through. So I'm like, it's almost Halloween. Let's watch a scary movie and he's like, oh my god, you like scary movies. And I'm like, yeah. So we put on the none on Netflix. I've never seen this, but I figured we were gonna talk to each other. Anyway, I didn't really think we were gonna pay attention. Puts the movie on, turns the lights down even more. I put my phone by my feet on the bed and right away I noticed he reached over and grabbed my phone and put it in his shower caddy, which I couldn't reach without asking him for it. He's like, here, let me take your phone. I just don't want it to fall into the crack. And it's so valid because that would have been a nightmare to have to like dig it out and go under the bed. But it was kind of far from the crack. So that was kind of alarming. And he puts his arm around me and I'm like, oh, that's nice. He starts talking to me and he's telling me, you know, I was thinking about you all weekend. I just really can't stop thinking about you. I think you're amazing. Like I've never met anybody like you before. And I'm loving it. I'm like, oh, I just tell me more about myself. He actually said we're very similar people. And now looking back, that's the biggest insult anybody has ever said to me. We have the same heart and a lot of our morals are the same. I'm still not really sure if I like this guy, but the lip service is fantastic. You're watching the movie again and all of a sudden he starts to kiss me and I was a little more intense on the first time. And I was like, okay, let me just kind of stop you there because I was like, I don't want to take it any further than this. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about you. I'm trying to think about if this is what I want. And he was like, oh, yeah, like I totally understand. I'm so sorry. I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I don't want to take things too fast. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, what a really good guy this is. And this is probably within the span of 15 minutes since I'd been down there. And that made me like him a little bit more because I was like, he can take no for an answer. And that makes me feel really safe with somebody new. And then I said, hey, can I have my phone? I didn't know what time it was. Now it's awkward now and I want to look at my phone for a minute. And he goes, no, you don't need your phone. You're with me. Like, let's just hang out. Let's just talk. And I was like, yeah, he's right. I don't really need my phone for anything. I'm just trying to use it as like a crutch. He never gave me my phone. We went back to watching the movie and chatting with each other. He actually had a work study job at my school. So he was telling me about that and how he didn't want to go to work the next day. And I was like, yeah, that sounds not fun. I wouldn't want to do that either. You know, just joking around. Then it's silent for a few minutes because we started to really like watch the movie. His arm is still around me at this point. And I'm still squished between him and the wall. He looks at me and I look back at him because I see him at him of the side of my eye. And I'm like, what the heck is he looking at? And I'm like, what? And he just immediately starts to kiss me again. My alarm bells are ringing because I told you to stop. You stopped and you apologized. And I made it very clear that I didn't want to do that. So now at this point, my heart's beating. And I'm like, what's going on? This is so weird. I tried to push him off gently like on the chest. I'm like, okay, back off. And instead of backing off, he moved me so that I was flat with my legs open. And he wedged himself on top of me. At that point, there's nothing I can do. I'm panicking and I'm trying to push him off me right after that. He takes both of my wrists with one hand and pins my arms above my head so that I can't move. And I'm stuck there laying on my back. And with his other hand, he's moving around under my clothes, touching my chest and touching my stomach, fumbling around under my shirt. I'm freaking out. And I'm like, what is going on? I don't want to do this. I was super confused because I thought that he understood I didn't want to do it. So then I finally was able to put my knee into his stomach in a way to get him off of me. I didn't want to hurt him. There's not a lot of damage that I could do. But I had stopped him and I was like, hey, I don't know what you're doing. I don't want to do that. I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but I did not come down here to do this. And I thought that you understood that. And he was like, oh, yeah, you're right. I'm really sorry. I don't know what just came over me. That was really inappropriate of me. I'm so sorry. I don't want to make you upset. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to damage our friendship or anything that won't happen again. I can't believe I did that in my head. I'm like, this is not the guy that I thought he was. Now I'm realizing how vulnerable I actually am. I'm locked in a very dark and very small room with a guy that I clearly don't know. My roommate's upstairs. Nobody can come get me. I don't have my phone. I'm squished between him and the wall. I can't get out of this bed. I'm starting to panic. So he backs off and after he apologizes, I asked him again for my phone. And he goes, no, like, you don't need your phone. You're with me. And I was like, no, I really need my phone because now I'm trying to text my roommate and just figure out what the heck I'm going to do to get out of here as fast as I can. So I'm like, no, please give me my phone. And he was like, okay, fine, I'll give you your phone. He reaches over and gets my phone from me out of that shower, caddy that's across the room. And I'm like, thank you. I just wanted to see if my roommate's okay up there and I text Jamie. And I go, help. I really need you to call me and come up with an excuse for me to leave. I don't want to be here anymore. I didn't want to say the wrong thing. I didn't want to just get up and run because what if he attacked me? I had no idea. And I had never experienced anything like this. I was just like, okay, let's go back to watching the movie. And he's like, okay, yeah, I'm sorry. Again, like, I really can't believe that I'm coming on so strong. I'll control myself and I was like, cool, okay, I'm like angry and I'm anxious and I'm scared. So I'm sitting there silently, trying to make myself as unappealing and small as possible, I guess. Squish between the wall and this dude that I don't know. We're watching the movie again for a few minutes. And like, clockwork probably five minutes went by just like the last time. He was motivated this time. I don't know if it's because I had made him angry by being on my phone before or rejecting him. But instead of turning to me and waiting for me to notice him and then starting to kiss me, he grabs the side of my waist, pulls me to the middle of the bed and this crazy like swift WWE like slam movement jumps on top of me, pins my arms up really fast above my head again. It's so calculated. He reaches under my sweatshirt and unclips my bra with one hand and lifts my shirt and bra up so that my whole bare chest is exposed. While holding my hands up, he's going down my body and biting me, physically causing me injury on my chest. I'm actually like expressing pain. I'm saying out loud, stop. You're hurting me. That's extremely uncomfortable. You're hurting me. I don't want this. He's putting all of his crushing weight on me. I didn't ever consider the size difference between him and I until I was under the weight of him and I was like, wow, I could die. My hands are pinned up with one hand and then he lets go of my wrists. But I'm frozen in time at this point. So I'm not doing anything. I'm just talking constantly going stop, stop, stop. You're hurting me. Stop. And with one hand, he's like groping around on my chest and with the other hand, he slips his hand into my pants and starts to put his fingers into me and slamming into me very aggressively and quickly to the point where I was crying in pain. I don't think I was in my body at that point. I recently discovered that when I talk about it now in therapy, I was watching myself and I wasn't actually me in that moment, which I think is a protective mechanism for my brain. I snap back into it all of a sudden after it had been going on for four or five minutes of him just being aggressive and violent, covering my mouth, trying to get me to stop talking. And then at one point, I sat up just a little bit to try to push him off me. And then that's when he choked to me until I was unable to even speak. Finally, I was able to move my leg and kick him off of me. And that's when I finally got him to stop. I think it startled him. And that's when he let go of my throat. He took his hand out from my clothes and he backed up to the foot of the bed. And I was like, what is wrong with you? It was divine timing. My roommate was calling me and he could hear my phone ringing in the shower caddy. While I had the opportunity and the side of the bed was open, I quickly rolled over, completely topless. It was so humiliating and it was cold and dark. My shorts were like halfway down and it was just awful. I felt so exposed. I grabbed my phone and I picked up the phone and my roommate, she was saying that one of our friends was in our room and needed help. So I literally put her on speaker phone so he could hear it. And I said, hey, I'm really sorry. I have to go. My friend needs my help. I need to leave right now. And he was so angry that he whipped the blanket off the bed and he was like, fine, just go. And I was like, okay, thank you. So as fast as I could put my clothes back on. And as I was walking to the door to finally leave, he turns to me and he goes, you should come back down after we can hang out some more, which is the craziest thing that anybody could ever say in that moment. Why in God's name would I ever come back to this room? I think he was trying to make it seem nonchalant. That was not as bad as I had made it out to be. But I was in tears. My makeup was down my face. My neck was red. I had a huge giant bruise on my chest from him biting me and I was like, this is the last place I would ever come back to. But I didn't want to say that because I don't know this guy at all anymore. So I went back upstairs and my roommate got one look at me when I walked in the door and she was like, what the hell happened to you? I told my roommate the entire story and as much detail as I could, but I was reeling and I was crying and hyperventilating. I don't really remember what I told her, but I know that she had the full story because she ended up helping me with the rest of the situation and telling me what to do. And the first thing that my roommate encouraged me to do was go to the bathroom and I used the bathroom and I was actually bleeding. It looked like I had started my period, but I had not been due for it at all. So that was really scary. That shocked me back into reality. Something is terribly wrong. That was not okay. I'm physically injured and internally now I'm injured. That made me completely spiral. And so I started panicking and my roommate was like, why don't we go downstairs to the RA and just tell her what happened so that even if you never do anything about it, you have told somebody else that's not me because I want you to know that you were assaulted. That is 100% an assault. I'm here for you and I want you to go share this with somebody else so that there's another person that knows what happened to you and see where we go from there. But I had never been assaulted. I'd never even come close to that. Hearing that come out of somebody's mouth that cares about me was so... I don't even have the word for it. It was such a surreal experience. I had already been talking to my RA on and off because the heater in our room was broken. So I had gone and talked to her a few different times and her and I had a really nice relationship and I trusted her. She happened to be the one that was on duty like supervising the whole building for the night. Thank God. My roommate and I went into the RA office and we asked her if we could talk and she was immediately super welcoming. I remember sitting in this really big chair that was really uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable just in general. I was cold. I was crying. I told her as much as I could in between like sobs and gasping and snott bubbles. My roommate, she was able to fill in the missing pieces for me. The RA ended up writing it all down and taking a full report. She drafted up an email just in case I wanted to share it with the dean of students who I found out was the title 9 deputy also. But at that point, I was just completely not myself. I was reeling. I was sick. I was anxious. I was hurting. I don't want to do anything right now. I told you my story now I'm going to bed and they were like, okay, yeah, that's fine. Go to bed. And then my RA was like, but I want you to come back here tomorrow and check in with me and see if you want to go forward with making a report about this because this is 100% in assault on our campus and we want to handle this appropriately. And I was like, okay, I went back up to my room and I took a shower and tried to like scrub my skin off. I could have used one of those scrub daddies and took my skin and clean off my body. I felt horrible and I just showered and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Put my pajamas on and went to sleep. I'm so sorry. Did you in that moment think at all about whether or not you would go to the police? I did not want to even face that it happened to me. I was so disassociated. I was watching myself move through the rest of the evening, watching myself shower, watching myself go to bed. I didn't want to be me at that moment. I just was like a spectator. Coming up this season on something was wrong. The Title IX system produces more institutional betrayal and fewer accountability actions than our criminal justice system. Had they done their job the first time, my daughter would not have been assaulted. I didn't ever consider the size difference between him and I until I was under the weight of him and I was like, wow, I could die. Her friends were telling her like, hey, I had a class today and guess what? They used your actual case as our homework. Places like theater departments, music departments, there's that competitive component. There is a hierarchy at the top of that hierarchy. This wasn't just an instance of him crossing boundaries with multiple young women. This was him manipulating all of us. I do think why he was doing misgrooming. I was at his absolute back in call. I would have done anything he wanted me to do. He looks at me and says everyone's probably wondering why you're here with me and who you are and why you're so special. Over time, our sexual contact became less and less consensual. The fraternity or a football team were really good examples of places where we know that the violence perpetration rate is higher than other places on campus. The Utah Valley students lawsuit claims her own school didn't help her when she reported she was raped in 2019 because her alleged assailant was a student at the University of Utah. The second university that she says failed to act. That is until unified police started investigating. One of the most unexpected parts of this experience was the amount of secondary trauma that I endured from the justice system and from the systems that were put in place to protect me. Thank you so much to each and every survivor and guest for sharing their experiences with us and thank you for listening. Something was wrong is a broken cycle media production created and produced by Tiffany Rees. Thank you endlessly to our associate producer Amy B. Chessler, social media marketing manager Lauren Barkman, an audio engineer Becca High. Shout out and thank you to our supporting partners Steven Wack, Marissa and Travis at WME, audio boom and our legal and security partners. Thank you so much to Abbiomi for this season's gorgeous cover of Gladrag's original song You Thank You from their album Wonder Under. Music production for this cover by Janice JP Pachenko recorded at the Grill Studios in Emeryville, California. Find all artist info and socials linked in the episode notes to hear more. As always, thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe friends.