Writing fro Oklahoma State’s student newspaper, Kassie McClung: Ashley sits at a wooden table and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear with a sweaty palm. Her eyes shift nervously from the officer to the floor. OSU Police Officer Colt Chandler places his folded hands on the table and looks at her, waiting for her to say something.
Ashley wishes she was alone.
Chandler slides a document in front of her.
“All I need from you is a signature right there,” he says in a video provided by OSU Communications. “You can read through there and see what’s going on.”
But Ashley knows what the document says. As soon as she signs the paper her case will be closed, so she scribbles her signature on the bottom line without hesitation.
“Is there any particular reason why we chose to do this?” Chandler asks.
Ashley pauses for a moment.
“I just don’t think it’s a strong case,” she says.
It was the alcohol, the lack of evidence and the little support she felt that shaped her decision to not press charges against her rapist.
It crushed her.
“I felt like I didn’t matter, and what happened to me didn’t matter,” Ashley said in a recent interview with the O’Colly. “I felt like a statistic pushed under the rug.”
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