Survivor Stories at Winona State University

"my ex is an abuser. used me for sex throughout the entirety of our relationship, while physically, mentally, and financially abusing me. leaving me with nothing. they assaulted me more times than i choose to remember. i will never trust another lover for as long as i live"

*This page will be updated weekly if not sooner

"I was sexually coerced by someone on campus two years ago. It could have turned into an assault if I didn’t stop it so quickly. At first, I didn't report anything because I was made to believe that it didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, as well as was told that the title ix coordinator would make it into an extremely long process and that it would probably exhaust me. I had talked to my friends a year ago, and we realized that my coercer had also done really creepy and sexual things to other people on campus, and had been behaving this way for the entire time he's been here. I decided that I didn't want what he did to me to be done to other people in my position so I reported. There have been so many times this past year where I've gotten so stressed out that I've contemplated just taking my complaint back and not going through with it. It is so overwhelming to tell a story to someone who is supposed to be unbiased and then hear them tell you that what you experienced does not qualify as sexual assault or coercion or harassment in the university's eyes, even though you've read the laws and legal speak on the MN state website and WSU website over and over and you know it is. It is sickening to know that because this process takes so long, there are people that have experienced odd or creepy or downright disgusting things with this person, and he's on campus still. I have heard so many stories about him from at least 20 different people, but no one cares. Not only are they the coordinator, they're also the only investigator. Having an investigator interrupt you while you're talking and tell you that since she went to law school, she knows what the actual definition is and that your story doesn't fit with it and that there's nothing she can do seems, for lack of a better word, lazy. I see my assaulter pretty much every biweekly. My mental well-being and physical health is consistently broken down, and I wish he wasn't on campus racking up more creepy stories for females and males alike. WSU pledges that they want to empower survivors to speak up and pursue formal action if that's what would help them, but who would be empowered to tell their story if the person they're telling it to is already writing them off? How is it empowering to be restricted to investigation of one single event that happened within an entire night of icky behaviors? How is it empowering to tell a victim that not only will they have to be in the same room as their assaulter (even though legally, you can request to be in a different room), they will have to represent themselves and will have to ask their assaulter questions? That is not empowerment. That is re-traumatizing. WSU tells all its students about the safe campus it has. It requires all students to complete a sexual violence orientation course when they apply. What they don't do? Go the lengths to actually protect their students from the creepy people they actively let stay on campus."

"I was taught that I can always say no if someone asks me for sex. What no one told me was that, sometimes, they won’t ask you directly. Sometimes, it’s asking you what underwear you’re wearing when you don’t feel comfortable sharing. Sometimes, it’s calling you a tease because you won’t. Sometimes, it’s being angry because you’re leading them on, and you owe it to them. They teach you about creepy men, and pedophiles trying to lure you into a van with candy. They don’t tell you it can be your best friend. They don’t tell you it can be someone you’ve known most of your life. They don’t tell you it can be the person you trust most in the entire world. The worst part about the whole thing, is that I didn’t realize it was wrong until it was too late."

"I was sexually assaulted in the fall of last year (Fall 2022) by a classmate in my major who I have all my classes with multiple times a week. I knew I had options and when I went to seek out those options I was told it was not even worth going to the title IX office because the process would go on pretty much up until I graduated in May 2024 which would do nothing about the unsafe situation I was in and am currently still in. I was stalked and harassed by my assaulter almost all of Spring 2023. My professors were luckily able to help a little but they said they could not help in the way that was needed without me reporting to the Title IX office. Even then, after talking to someone about my options I was told that I would be removed from my classes and transferred to the online version and not the person who assaulted me. I would have to be the person that totally has to move my life around the person who sexually assaulted me which is retraumatizing to know that the only solution to this was to have them have control over more areas of my life. It truly made it not even worth it to go to the Title IX office at all. I truly hope that the process will get easier or more accessible to future survivors wherever they are in their educational journey."

"My freshman year, I was on tinder and matched with this girl. She was the same age as me, and went to WSU. We agreed to meet at her apartment downtown because I lived in the dorms. She parked in the church parking lot behind the quad and I walked over to her car. I couldn’t really see into it, as it had tinted windows. I got in the passenger seat, closed the door and they immediately locked. The driver was a guy and I asked where the girl was and he said that he is just picking me up, that he’s her roommate. I was 18 and nieve, didn’t think twice about it. I got to the apartment and she was no where to be found. I was then raped by 3 guys. It went on for about an hour. After they stopped and I was able to put whatever clothes I didn’t have on back on, the guy that had picked me up told me that he was going to take me home. This is the first time I’m able to actually go back onto my phone and send my best friend my location. He drops me back off at the dorms and I tell her about it. Because I’m a guy, I never told anyone. Guys don’t get raped."

"In 2023 I was sexually assaulted. I tried bottoming for the first time with my now ex. I told him to go slow and use lube. He ignored me and entered me without warning. It took me screaming for him to stop. After we broke up, I told my friends and they were the ones to tell me that what happened was assault. I still don’t know if he can face consequences from the school."

"I always went home after drinking with guy that I thought was my best friend and significant other. I tested him to take care of me, to always have my best interest at heart, but it took over a year to realize that he was just using me. my abuser used me and manipulated me for over a year. he isolated from my peers, which made me co-dependant on him. any time he hurt my feelings I was always gaslighted in making it my fault. He ended up taking advantage of me three times while I was unconscious. when questioning if the events happened I was told that I either made it up, that it was just a hook up, or that he thought he loved me in the moments but now he thinks its just in the "heat of the moment". He would convince me to sleep with him, by telling me that this time he promises to be with me as my partner and that he'll always love me. these statements happened almost every two weeks for at least 6 months. on the weeks that we were just friends, he became physically violent towards me. If I upset him, he would pin me to the ground, put his knee on my back or sit on me till I couldn't breathe. when he was done I would ask him why he would do that to me, his response was "you don't understand because you've never grew up with siblings". I was never allowed to tell anyone about the things that happened with us, especially my closest friends. After he raped me three times and has verbally, and physically abused me, people still are giving him more rights than me the survivor. I feel like people care more about protecting him away from me, than protecting me from him. I don't feel safe her on campus, I feel like a burden to the university, and I feel like I do not matter to title IX or administration."

I was raped the day before classes started my sophomore year ('22-'23) by another student at WSU. I ended up going through the informal process because I heard how drawn out and emotionally taxing the Title IX process was. I didn't feel like reliving what had just happened over and over again at that point. The informal process didn't do anything to help the situation though. It wasn't enough. As the year went on, I heard my peers mention him and I saw that they were mutuals with him on social media. It was as if I had been torn open over and over again anytime someone said his name, mentioned his major, anytime I saw him on campus, or in social media posts. Anytime I saw him I'd panic and rush to a bathroom where I'd start to sob and hyperventilate. He was living his life like normal while I was a confused, terrified and emotional wreck. It wasn't fair. It's still not fair because he's still living his life as if nothing happened. He faced no consequences because when I had finally had enough, I went to the Title IX Coordinator, and she told me it was too late. The school couldn't and wouldn't do anything about it since I had already gone through the informal process. I started to cry. That's not fair. They were just going to let a rapist keep walking around campus. In April, I went to the Winona Police department and reported my sexual assault because I needed to see him face the consequences of his actions. The little hope I had that maybe he'd be found guilty was completely extinguished when in October of 2023, the police department told me they weren't going to press charges. They didn't feel comfortable accusing him of rape because he was drunk. It happened twice though. He couldn't have been drunk after sleeping and waking up in the morning. They told me that if my sane exams had been done accurately, that still wouldn't have changed anything. How does a drunk driver get arrested, but a drunk rapist does not? That doesn't make sense. After that, I tried letting the people who supervised his campus job know what he did but as far as I know, they did nothing (there's much more to that part). It's been over a year since my rape, and I am still distraught. I feel as though a major part of my identity has been ripped from me. I feel like I've been poisoned. So many parts of who I am are all messed up. I feel so broken. I cry and shake in my sleep, I have sexual assault dreams, my anxiety spikes when I see someone that looks like him or has the same name, or when I see him on WSU posts. I still get so worked up to the point where my body is all tensed up and I begin to hyperventilate and sob. There's not a day that goes by where I am not reminded of what happened. I am plagued with reminders and flashbacks while he's attending classes and going about life like normal. I will not stop until I've gotten justice. I will try every option. He can't get away with this. It's not fair.

"My freshman year i was walking back to my dorm at night and this guy came up to me and started talking. I got a weird vibe but he continued to follow me. I was beyond uncomfortable and than he made a sexual remark to me and grabbed my chest. Luckily i was able to run away and get help from my RA. I was in tears and went to security about it because i was so scared and i talked to the president of security. A couple days later he sent me an email saying they couldn’t do anything because they didn’t want to ruin the students standing as a student. He got to walk free while i still live with that pain everyday and even though i am no longer a student i cant help but hold a grudge against WSU for letting it slide."

"Im sad to say that I have more than one story of being SA’ed while I was a student at WSU (I’m now an alumni). While there may be differences among the events, the one thing that stands out to me in each of them is that none of these perpetrators asked if I wanted to have sex. And thinking about each incident, if they simply would have asked me “do you want this?” Or something along those lines, I would have said “no”. But none of them asked me. The one time I was going to sleepover at a friend’s house (a friend I had sex with in the past) after a night at the bars, and made it clear that I just wanted to sleep and not hook up, he made me leave his apartment. Basically saying if I didn’t have sex with him, I couldn’t sleepover. So I walked to a friends house. It’s sad that I know my stories are not unique to other people at WSU."

"I was assaulted in the fall of my freshman year here at WSU. At the time, he wasn’t a student. He was 23 and I was 19. I thought I needed to be with someone older because I thought “he would know better” and be “more mature”. But he wasn’t. He coerced me on campus property, with my roommates in the room. I didn’t know what had happened at the time. I felt uneasy about it and when I tried talking to him about it, he refused. He blocked me on all social media platforms shortly after. I thought that’s where it would end, but now he’s enrolled at the university. Housing forced me to report what happened to me. They promised I would hear back from the Title IX coordinator. It took me emailing her a month after the report was made to get in contact with her. She promised to keep me updated on my report, but I often had to email her for updates or get the advocates to ask on my behalf. Every time I met with her, she pushed me to make a police report, even though I made it very clear that I did not want the police involved. In the end, she told me she couldn’t do anything because he wasn’t a student at the time of the assault. She told me I could take alternate routes to get to class. I continue to see him everywhere, which causes me to have panic attacks and relive the trauma. I’ve had to get on medication because of the situation. It has affected my life in ways that I never could have imagined. Title IX doesn’t give a fuck about survivors or their trauma. She [Title IX coordinator] sweeps sexual assault under the rug to protect the university’s image. Safety should be the number one concern. We need more protection for survivors because they deserve better, not to live in fear."

"I had grown decently close with my advisor/professor that eventually he offered me a on-campus job telling me that his work was priority among everyone else. One time after telling him my backup plan of being a personal assistant he made a reference to the BDSM movie the secretary. Things got worse after that, his hand on my back through doors, commenting on my outfits “your showing some skin today huh?”, texting me personally, asking if I would ever date a man his age, inviting me over to his house asking if I would get high with him. He even told me that my internship I had lined up wouldn’t work, suggesting I do it with him instead (later I found out he had approved another students internship at the same place). When in his office while I was working he would comment on whatever female students were wearing in class. He would show up to my second job and eventually my anxiety got so bad I quit both my jobs. I reported to title nine at the end of the semester, a week into the next he texted me again and finally the no contact order was delivered. My decision was pushed back to finals after being told initially that it would be done by late January mid February. I had to request that my witness be interviewed after finding out title nine had not done so, I had to wait multiple days for my emails to title nine to get a response. I had to organize meeting with the dean as title nine had not to get my schedule and degree altered in order to not have to see him on campus. Title nine ruled in his favor. I know multiple women who have gone through the same thing in the past with him but haven’t reported due to multiple reasons. Since then I am finishing my last semester online as I cannot be on campus without having a panic attack."

"My friend set me up with a friend of his we went out and partied together on NYE. I was drinking a bit too much and ended up throwing up at his house. I was passed out on the floor for an hour before he woke me up and took me to his bed. He undressed me and I didn’t know what was happening until he grabbed my head. I was crying and yelled no, but he didn’t stop, he continued to rape me. He fell asleep and I still couldn’t move my limbs for another hour, I left and walked home. I never told anyone, not even my friend who still hangs out with him. I know I was high and drunk and I also know what happens to victims if they are drinking and dressed a certain way."

"As a women I have become used to gross comments and looks from men. So used to it that when the comments and remarks started coming from my advisor I didn’t think anything of it. Eventually I got messages in the middle of the night. Was told to keep the non-pg photos/ messages on Snapchat. Been told by him that I’m good looking on multiple occasions, and most disturbing of all was told to send him my only fans link if I ever made one. Were the grade he gave me because I deserved it or because of my looks? How can I report him when I still need him for my graduation planning? Unfortunately this is the reality for most women."

"I've repeated my story so many times that at this point it feels exhausting to even talk about it. It's been years since I was assaulted and i still think about it every day. But the thing that really sticks with me, that felt more violating and traumatizing than the assault, was everything that happened afterwards. Like how for years I didn't get professional mental health help because my assaulter tried to spin a tale that I was mentally unstable and didn't understand what happened-- I thought if I went to a therapist, they would use it against me as "evidence" that I was crazy. Or how WSU wrote in their decision letter that they believed me, but the only "punishment" my assaulter got was to retake the mandatory online consent course. Or how when I appealed the decision, saying if they truly believe me then they need to protect me (remove my assaulter from my class, the dorms, etc), they decided it was too harsh to remove him from my class. It was too harsh to remove him from the dorms. They felt protecting me was too harsh. And slowly I felt the title 9 staff distance themselves from my case too. I felt abandoned. WSU protected my assaulter. And it sucks to watch the horrible decision makers continue to move up in their field, when they made an active decision to leave me, my health, my safety, my access to my education, behind."

"I was 20 and at a party, I wasn’t drinking I was the sober cab for the night. I went to the bathroom and someone had followed me. I turned the light on, they turned it off. I was pinned up against the wall with the smell of alcohol on his breath. He said to me “I know you’ve been wanting this” and proceeded to rape me. He covered my mouth as I cried and tried to get away. Nothing worked, he was bigger than me. He was finished, he slammed the bathroom door and walked out. To this day I still don’t know who the individual was and it’s been almost two years. My “friends” said they didn’t know someone followed me to the bathroom and proceeded to tell people that I was lying about it. I didn’t feel like I could report anything because I didn’t know who the person who raped me was. I live with it everyday."

"My first real boyfriend (I was a sophomore and he was a senior, both in high school) constantly made me feel stupid and he often pressured me to do "stuff" with him. After we broke up we tried to stay friends, hindsight is always 20/20, I thought maybe this could lead to us getting back together. He SA'ed me and I froze, I always told myself that if I was ever in that situation I would fight back. I told my girl friends at the time. Before I knew it my guy friends were making jokes about it and girls that didn't like me were telling people I lied about it. My ex's friend wrote "stupid cunt" on the hood of my car."