The TIME Magazine photographer told Katie Koestner she didn't "look enough like a victim," so when the June 3, 1991 issue was published it was not Koestner on the cover but a different beauty with dark eyes, dark hair, and a striking look of fear. The real Katie Koestner, a petite young woman with long blonde hair, does not have that same look of fear to her but instead it is a look of truth, as the audience in the Hagan Campus Center Hall learned on a snowy evening just over two weeks ago.
Koestner said a number of times that she could "tell the story of the worst night of my life a thousand times," but she had not come to Assumption with a story to tell but a question to ask: "What would each of [us] do for a day without rape?" Most members of the audience had probably never been asked that question. It was not until after Koestner finished her lecture that the question was even seriously pondered.
"I hear about ten stories a day about rape. I want a day with no rape," she said. Katie Koestner will never have a day without rape, not because she encounters it first hand every day but because she lives with the story of the day she was raped every day. The difference, however, is that before she even began " [we] knew the end of the story; [she] didn't."
She graduated high school in a class of 600 seniors. She was the only individual from her high school who had decided to attend the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and it was during her three-day freshman orientation that she realized how much fun college was going to be. The women's residence hall where she was staying invited the guys over to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was there that she spotted Peter, a stunning male specimen, and then that she began planning as to how they would meet. After all, there were only two dining halls on the campus; she would have a 50/50 shot at lunchtime every day.
It ended up being at lunch shortly thereafter that they coincidentally met at the trash can, coincidentally meaning perfectly timed. Unaware of Assumption's dining services, Koestner blushed as she mentioned that their conversation topic was the awful Marriott food. What was originally a study session blossomed into time regularly being spent together. "We were not dating, we were not 'hooking up,' we were 'hanging out'. a very technical term," she laughed.
It was during their first real date that Katie saw a side of Peter that alarmed her. They dressed formally and went to a fancy French restaurant across the street from the school. Her date ordered dinner in French and she was greatly impressed with him. He had ordered champagne though Katie did not drink. Feeling pressured and not wanting to ruin the whole date, she had two sips to his two glasses. Some criticized her later for even doing that, suggesting that it was a sign she would easily give in to other things. Katie argues, "In my mind I'd only given in to two sips of champagne."
Over dinner Peter told Katie of his family's vacation home on an island off of the coast of Greece. To Katie's delight, he suggested that she spend the summer there with him and his family. He went on to mention that while in Greece she would have to both dress and act differently. "You're going to have to have sex with me whenever I want to," she remembers him saying. Katie laughed it off but could not escape the knot that had formed in her stomach. She had admitted to Peter prior to their date that she was a virgin, intent on staying that way until marriage. His response: "You remind me so much of my first girlfriend. I waited for her. for two months."
Returning from dinner, the two walked by fraternity row. Katie had no desire to go to a frat party because they were certainly too overdressed. She wanted to go back to her room and dance to a "mix" she made underneath "constellations" glued to her ceiling. Though an innocent invitation, Katie explained "Different people think the most extraordinarily different things when you invite them over."
By the end of the third song, it was the way that Peter was attempting to unbutton the three delicate rhinestone buttons on the back of Katie's long, black dress that concerned her. She worried that his force would damage the dress that her mother had made her for homecoming. Katie was uncomfortable but not assertive or maybe even a little nave. "Maybe I was nave. if you define nave as 'you think you like someone, can be alone in a room with them, and not have sex,'" she said.
"I liked him; I liked him a lot and I don't want you to forget that part," she reminded the audience. Katie seemed to be the first on the long list of girls who wanted to date him and she was flattered. She was less than impressed though when Peter began tickling her; she hated to be tickled. When the two wrestled on her pink carpet, the funny suddenly became not so funny and the laughter stopped. It was clear to Katie that she was trapped underneath someone who was more than 60 pounds heavier than she was.
Her arms were held above her head by only one of his arms. He kissed her aggressively and she could barely speak. She questioned him: "what are you doing?" He replied, "nothing," not even remotely acknowledging the force he had used against her. "Please get off of me," Katie pleaded. "I know I said please," she remarked to her listeners. Peter did get off of Katie having done her little physical harm. She thought he would sleep it off and go home, but she was wrong.
He slept on her bed and she stayed in the far corner of the room, awake the whole night. When he awoke early the next morning he suggested she try to get some sleep. "I am so sorry. I promise you it will never happen again," he told a still very frightened Katie. "He looked and sounded sorry and I wanted to believe him. I let down my guard," she said. Katie did shut her eyes briefly but even in her dreams she could not get away from Peter. She found herself on the bed against the wall, hands pinned across her chest, only this time he did not let up. "C'mon," he told her repeatedly. "Calm down, relax. Everything is going to be fine if you relax."
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