maryville

Did Daisy Coleman ‘Expect’ to Get Raped?

A Fox News guest and Maryville rape-accuser Daisy Coleman are in disagreement about whether Daisy Coleman expected to get raped on a January night in 2012. Joseph DiBenedetto, a New York criminal defense attorney who has represented the Gottis, appeared on Shepard Smith’s show yesterday to provide his opinion in the Maryville rape case. The case, which had been dismissed by the county prosecutor (and a friend of the accused), will be reexamined by a special prosecutor after an investigation by the Kansas City-Star thrust it into the national spotlight and onto Anonymous’s radar. DiBenedetto’s expert take? Coleman is probably lying, but, either way, she must have expected it when she snuck out of the house at 1 a.m.

Transcript from the Atlantic Wire:

There’s no denying that from the surface it appears to be some sort of cover-up. But when you look at the finer details, there are telltale signs of this girl actually lying. She is leaving her home at 1 a.m. in the morning and nobody forced her to drink. And what happens? She gets caught by her mom, she’s embarrassed and the easy way out here is, ‘Mom, someone took advantage of me.’ But what did she expect to happen at 1 a.m. in the morning after sneaking out? I’m not saying — assuming that these facts are accurate and this did happen — I’m not saying she deserved to be raped, but knowing the facts as we do here including what the prosecutor has set forth, this case is going nowhere and it’s going nowhere quick.

(Just in case you heard — oh, somewhere — that rape advocates’ concerns about victim-blaming had gotten a bit overblown.)

Writing in xoJane today (not her first media appearance), Coleman reiterates that she was taken advantage of, not merely embarrassed about getting busted sneaking out of the house to have drunk sex. “I was not interested in Matt [Barnett] romantically,” she wrote. “I considered him my older brother’s friend. I trusted my older brother. I trusted Matt.” She added that the tall glass of clear alcohol Barnett gave her contained five shots. They called it the “bitch cup.”

Did Daisy Coleman ‘Expect’ to Get Raped?