Attacker's apology revives a victim's nightmare

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What really happened that night?
Seccuro read Beebe’s e-mails with growing unease.

Was this apology meant to help her — or him?

Her skepticism grew when they broached the topic of what happened that night in 1984.

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“Were you my only attacker?” she asked. “I clearly have an impression of this being either a gang rape or a ‘spectator sport’ for the rushees.”

Beebe’s account, however, was disturbingly different from hers.

“I ‘convinced’ you after what seemed like hesitation, that staying w/ me in my room upstairs was better than walking all the way back to the suites,” he wrote. “Of course, seeing opportunity to have a good time w/ you overrode any gentlemanly efforts to return you safely back to the dorms.”

“We started to make out in my room a while,” he continued. “There was no fight and it was all over in short order. When we awoke in the morning it was still chilly out, so i lent you my jean jacket, and you walked home.”

“There were no other men present. I was the only one.”

There was certainly a fight that night, Seccuro responded angrily. She awoke wrapped in a bloody sheet, then walked to the emergency room.

“I thought after all this time, you realized you had raped me and were apologizing,” she wrote. “I trusted that your apology came from a good and honest place and I see this is not the case.”

He had been drunk that night, he acknowledged, though not so drunk he couldn’t remember what happened. But he didn’t doubt her version.

“I did not get to choose being raped and having my virginity taken from me so brutally,” Seccuro wrote. “Now, I don’t get to choose having this wound reopened.”

And something else bothered her. Why was he shying away from using the word “rape”?

Beebe responded.

“I want to make clear that I’m not intentionally minimizing the fact of having raped you,” he wrote.

“I did.”

Seccuro felt confused and drained.

A few days later, she stumbled across a Web site dedicated to victims of rape at the University of Virginia.

She was floored. The problem suddenly seemed bigger than her own.

Minutes later, she left a message with the Charlottesville police.

On Jan. 4, 2006, Beebe was arrested in Las Vegas.

There is no statute of limitations on felonies in Virginia, and with Beebe’s written confession, it appeared to be an open and shut case.

Except Beebe, facing a sentence of life in prison, suddenly denied raping Seccuro.

She couldn’t believe it.