“I’d decided I was going to kill myself,” Brenda Tracy confessed to The Oregonian.
The 40-year-old woman says that on June 24, 1998, four football players, including two Oregon State athletes, gang raped her. Sixteen years after declining to pursue the case, she has come forward to tell her story.
“I remember not being able to move my arms and legs,” Tracy told The Oregonian‘s John Canzano. “I’ve always wondered if I was drugged. I was like a rag doll. They were picking me up and tossing me around the whole apartment.”
To add insult to injury, two of the accused rapists allegedly rummaged through the victim’s car.
Tracy reported the rape to the police. A medical examination found evidence of a rape. And accused players, who waived their right to remain silent and to the presence of counsel, admitted sex, but didn’t agree upon who, precisely, participated. Tracy ultimately backed out of pursuing the charges, and the two OSU players served a game suspension.
Mike Riley, OSU’s coach back in 1998, labeled the players’ actions a “bad choice” at the time. Tracy says that the phrase still bothers her terribly.
The coach, who says he’s in the business of growing men, says he regrets those words.
“It’s so sad to me that it still haunts her,” Riley told The Oregonian. “It’s scary what that means to a lady. Maybe retribution would have helped that. I don’t know. I just reminded our team here recently about those things that will change their life and others in a blink of an eye.”
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