The letter

Edie Magnus, Dateline correspondent: Was he there when you woke up?

Liz Seccuro: Yes.  Fully dressed.  Packing his backpack.  Off to class. Looked at me like nothing happened, and I’m naked in a bloody sheet.  And of course, I don’t want to say anything to him because I’m afraid he’s going to do it again.

Magnus: Did he say anything to you?

Seccuro: Yeah.  Just casual pleasantries.  Like, ‘Morning.  Off to class.  See ya.’

After he left, Liz rifled through his mail and learned his name: Beebe.  William Beebe, a 19-year-old sophomore from New York.

The dazed freshman says she walked out the frat house and headed for the local emergency room — almost a mile away.  Once there, she says she waited for hours but no doctor saw her.

Magnus: Did you show anyone your bruises?

Seccuro: Yeah.  I don’t think that they were ignoring me.  I think that, you know, people with graver injuries were presenting themselves at the time. And I just bailed. Went to my dorm and took, like, the the longest shower of my life.  I just wanted to feel clean again.

Word quickly spread around Liz’s dorm about the attack.

Elizabeth Ludwig, Liz’s former dorm mate: “Something’s wrong.  You need to come, you need to help.  Something’s wrong.

A number of girls, including then 21 year-old senior Elizabeth Ludwig, collected around the shaken freshman.

Ludwig: There were a lot of hushed tones.  “She said she was raped.  She said she was raped.”

They were sympathetic, she says, but privately skeptical.  Everybody knew about those high octane frat parties.

Ludwig: I think that I was not alone in—in wondering and casting doubt thinking—his just something that went a little too far?  Got a little bit out of your control perhaps?  And now you’re putting it together thinking you know I really shouldn’t have done that.  I’m a good girl, I want to save my reputation and so I’m going to be a victim.

Liz, meanwhile, turned to the person who knew her better than almost anyone—her best friend Meghan, a hundred miles away at Trinity University. 

Meghan, Liz's best friend: And so I said, “I’m coming down.” 

Meghan says when she arrived at Liz's door, she was stunned by what she saw.

Meghan: She was just huddled on her bed in the corner and just was—her arms wrapped around her legs and just sort of shivering and crying.

Meghan says she took Liz to the student health office where Liz was examined by an on duty nurse.

Seccuro: I just remember her saying words like, laceration, tearing.

Magnus: Did you report the incident to anyone at the university?

Seccuro: I did.

Liz says she filed a report with the UVA campus police—and met several times with the dean of students.  But she was immediately put off by the tone of those talks. 

Seccuro: He’s like, “Do you think you just had sex with this guy and you’re just embarrassed?”  No, no I don’t.  And he said to me, “Well, I spoke with him.  He said it was consensual.”  I mean, here’s this huge authority figure.  He is my parent away from home, as it were.  He tells me, “You know, you might want to take a semester off or think about transferring.”

Magnus: So what was the message that you were getting from the dean of students?

Seccuro: You don’t matter.  You need to be disposed of—and quickly.

Liz says the dean did offer her the option of bringing her own case against Beebe through the “University committee on students”—an internal, disciplinary hearing commonly reserved for kids who lie or cheat.   

Seccuro: I said absolutely not.  I’m not going to sit across the table from him and have students decide what?   To expel you? What could possibly be the punishment?  And I said, I’m not going through—what, this what Mickey Mouse court?

Magnus: you wanted him to be brought up on criminal charges.

Seccuro: Absolutely.

Magnus: Was he discouraging you from doing that?

Seccuro: No, he wasn’t discouraging me from doing it at all.  I think, though, that a 17-year-old whose just been brutally raped is not exactly making the right decisions.  I think  somebody had a duty to pick up the phone and call the police. 

SOBERING STATISTICS — About 90 percent of rapes occur between people who already knew each other. — A 2001 study by the Bureau of Justice and National Institute of Justice found that about 3 percent of college women experienced a completed and/or attempted rape during the current college year. — However, many claim less than 5 percent of completed and attempted rapes were reported to law enforcement officials. In about two-thirds of the rape incidents, however, the victim did tell another person about the incidents. Department of Justice, LiveSecure.org, Security on Campus Inc.

But the prospect of bringing disciplinary charges against Beebe quickly became moot.  One week after the alleged frat party sexual assault, William Beebe withdrew from UVA.

Seccuro: It certainly wasn’t intimated at all that, you know, he was asked to leave.  He left of his own volition.

With that, dormmates like Elizabeth Ludwig, became convinced Liz’s rape charge was true after all.

Ludwig: It was as if he was running away from the issue and it would never be surfaced again.

9 days after the alleged rape, Liz had what she said was the most crushing conversation of all — with her mom and dad.  It was parents weekend.  They were gathered in the dean’s office.

Seccuro: They were sitting in his office and they were just weeping.

Liz’s dad: I was beside myself.  You can imagine.  I was just in—in another world, you know?  Trying to grasp all this.

Her father’s instinct was to pull his daughter out of UVA right then and there. 

Seccuro: I said absolutely not.  I worked really hard to be here.  And I haven’t done anything wrong.  And I’m going to stay.

Liz’s dad: So I laid down some ground rules to Liz.  I told her she’s got to call us every night.  And the first sign that she feels that she’s uncomfortable here, call me and I’ll fly down, and pull her out.

Seccuro: And so I decided, you know what?  I’m going to forget this ever happened.  I’m going to push it in the back of my mind.  I’m going to soldier on.

It wasn’t that easy, of course.  Liz says she was often listless and jumpy.  She gave 2 anonymous interviews during her college years to the school newspaper about being a victim of rape.

Seccuro: Telling my story, just telling my story.

But she did find enjoyment from joining a sorority.  Until one night, in her junior year when the girls ordered a pizza - as fate would have it, it was Liz who answered the door.

Seccuro: Doorbell rang.  I opened the door.  There he is.

It was William Beebe. The one time-university student was now a pizza delivery man in Charlottesville.

Magnus:  You recognized him right away?

Seccuro:  Right away, you don’t forget someone’s eyes. I just shoved the money at him and kind of grabbed the pizza and I literally thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.

Magnus: Did you say anything to each other?

Seccuro: Absolutely not.

Magnus: So there was nothing to sort of indicate the recognition?

Seccuro: Oh he knew I knew who he was.  And I know he knew who I was.

Seeing Beebe again made Liz realize how traumatized she really was.  She graduated from UVA in 1988 -- but not with honors this time, not even close.  Still, Liz quickly found work in advertising. Then she too quickly jumped into a short and stormy first marriage with another UVA graduate.  One of many unfortunate choices, she now says, in a life that was somehow less than it could have been.

Seccuro: I was selling myself short.  I didn’t believe I was good enough.

Magnus: How often did you think of the assault?

Seccuro: The best it ever got for me was, you know, maybe once a week. It’s part of who I am.

Another consequence of the trauma, she says, was the onset of chronic panic attacks.

Michael Seccuro: She just out of the blue says, “I think I’m having a heart attack...”

It was a panic attack in 1997 — while she was dating Michael Seccuro, that compelled her to tell him about the rape.  Liz says it was always difficult when she had to talk about that chapter to a man she was interested in.

Seccuro: Like everyone else, will you run away from me?  Will you think I am trash, damaged in some way?

But Michael didn’t turn away.  They were married in 1999. By then she was a successful events planner—and he an investment banker.  They had a darling baby girl.  

Everything was going fine until September 8^th, 2005. That’s when the couple was leaving their  home for a much needed vacation.  All that remained before they pulled out of the driveway was for Michael to get the mail.

Michael Seccuro, now husband: I gave it to her. And she’s going through the mail, and  just stops cold on this letter, just complete silence.

Seccuro: I didn’t have to open it.  But I did.  I could not breathe.

It was the last person in the world Liz would ever dream of hearing from, or wanted to hear from.

Seccuro: Nothing in life can prepare me for a shock like that.

MORE FROM DATELINE

Dateline Section Front

Point blank: Sgt. Cole's story   Video: Soldier shooting raises disturbing questions Photos: To Iraq and back Justice halted: The murdered prosecutor Hard lessons: Teacher-student love turns lethal Bullies caught on tape: Aggressors, or victims? Inside the terror plot that 'rivaled 9/11' Clark Rockefeller: Famous name, infamous life How the phony French 'Rockefeller' conned Americans The crossbow incident Dateline Section Front   Add Dateline headlines to your news reader: