[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10030-10031]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             MEGAN'S STORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell Megan's story from her 
point of view and her beliefs.
  She was smart, kind, ambitious, and funny. She loved other people.
  After attending high school in Austin, Texas, she enrolled in the 
University of Alabama. She had a beautiful life--that is, until she was 
sexually assaulted in January of 2015.
  After a night of drinking with her friends, Megan was ready to go 
home and go to bed. However, a finely dressed young businessman who 
referred to himself as ``Sweet T'' offered to give her a ride.
  You see, Mr. Speaker, ``Sweet T'' was from the richest family in 
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and just so happened to be a big financial backer 
of that university.
  Megan didn't remember climbing into his sleek Mercedes, but she woke 
up at his Southern mansion and knew something was wrong. Megan said she 
resisted his initial advances and repeatedly told him she wanted to go 
home. He refused to do so. Instead, he sexually assaulted her, and then 
he fell off to sleep.
  She tried to get out of the room, but the door was locked. Desperate 
to escape, Megan climbed out of the mansion's second-story bedroom 
window and went to his car looking for her keys. It was there that she 
discovered a handgun Sweet T had in the car all the time but took it 
for her safety on her walk home.
  Doing everything a rape victim should do, she immediately called the 
police and went to the hospital. But it is here, Mr. Speaker, that the 
system, she says, started to fail her.
  The hospital wasn't sufficiently trained in sexual assault procedure 
and botched the rape kit. Megan then went to the police station to give 
her statement about what happened to her. But it was there she was 
treated with disdain and disbelief by Tuscaloosa's police department. 
After all, Megan was claiming that the son of one of the wealthiest 
families in Tuscaloosa had raped her.
  Despite her insistence that she said ``no,'' the police did not 
believe her. She said they didn't want to believe her. An officer asked 
her why she didn't punch or kick the rapist. The police thought it must 
have been consensual since she did not violently resist the attacker, 
and they moved on.
  But, Mr. Speaker, rape victims can never move on. It is something 
they carry with them for the rest of their lives. The scars left by the 
rape do not fade away for victims.
  Mr. Speaker, I was a prosecutor and judge in Texas for over 30 years. 
I met a lot of rape victims, and I learned how these attacks sometimes 
devastate their lives forever.
  Sexual assault is a very different type of crime. It rips the 
identity, the self-worth, and the very soul of the victim apart. It is 
the victim's belief, in some cases, that it is a fate worse than death.
  It is easy to second-guess what someone should or should not have 
done

[[Page 10031]]

after emotional trauma of sexual assault, but Megan believed she did 
everything a rape victim is supposed to do:
  She sought help, but she found none. The university failed her. The 
counselor assigned to her knew of the rapist's family name, so the 
university wouldn't give her any assistance and provided no other 
counselor. Megan was dismissed, ignored, blamed, and forgotten.
  In the months following the sexual assault, she was diagnosed with 
post-traumatic stress disorder. She was so depressed, she left the 
school and returned to Texas. Still feeling like there was no way to 
escape her pain, Megan took her life.
  Rape, Mr. Speaker, is never the fault of the victim. She deserved 
better.
  Now, I don't know whether the perpetrator in this case is guilty or 
not. I am giving you Megan's point of view. But what Megan believed was 
that she was failed by the hospital, law enforcement, and the 
University of Alabama.
  This past February before her death, Megan filled out a mental health 
clinic intake form at her new school, Southern Methodist University. 
One question asked if there had been any major losses, changes, or 
crises in her life. She wrote: ``Raped, bullied by police, and I 
changed university.''
  Mr. Speaker, it is important and it is imperative that we understand 
victims of sexual assault. She got the death penalty for being the 
victim of sexual assault. She is not here to tell her story today, and 
I am telling it for her.
  And that is just the way it is.

                          ____________________