[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12341-12344]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             MEGAN RONDINI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk today about a person, a 
person that I never got to meet, but this is her story, and this is her 
story from her point of view and the information that I have received 
from people who knew her, including her parents, her aunt, and some of 
her friends. And, like I said, I don't know the real facts of this 
case. I am just giving you my opinion, and I am here today to tell 
Megan Rondini's story, because she can't tell her case, Mr. Speaker.
  I am co-chair of the Victims' Rights Caucus, along with the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Costa), my friend. I was a former prosecutor in 
Houston, Texas, for 8 years. I tried felony cases. And then I was a 
criminal court judge for 22 years, seeing all kinds of violations of 
the law. I mention that because that is the background from which I 
speak.
  Over that time, I knew a lot of victims of crime. Too many victims of 
crime worked their way through the courthouse. I am going to talk about 
another one today: Megan Rondini.

                              {time}  1330

  She was 19 or 20 when she was a student at the University of Alabama, 
and on July 1, 2015, Megan and some of her friends, sorority friends, 
went to a nearby bar, as we would term it in the old days, where a lot 
of students in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, went for meeting other folks and 
hanging out.
  She came in contact with an individual whose name was Terry Jackson 
Bunn, Jr. His nickname was Sweet T.
  Sweet T--being from the South, you can understand somebody being 
called that, Mr. Speaker.
  He was a patron of this establishment. He was older. He was in his 
early thirties. Megan was approximately 20.
  He invited her to go over to his house, to look at his house, because 
he and his family live in a big mansion in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She 
agreed to go. He went with another individual that he knew, and they 
went over to his house.
  They go upstairs, and here is where the problem and the crime 
apparently started. He takes her into his bedroom. She says: This is 
not a good idea.
  She may have been intoxicated, but apparently later during that 
evening, she is drugged or under the influence of drugs and really was 
not coherent during this time, according to her, later.
  He sexually assaulted her. She did not consent. She did not consent. 
And she, from that day on, told everybody who talked to her about this 
case she did not consent.
  He had sexual intercourse with her. He falls asleep on the bed.
  She gets up. She tries to get out of this upstairs room. There is a 
dead bolt on the door, apparently. She couldn't get out. She couldn't 
figure out how to get out, so she climbs out the second-story window in 
the middle of the night and jumps from the second-story window to a 
trash can on the ground.
  She doesn't have her keys. She didn't know where they are. So his car 
is parked there, a Mercedes, sleek Mercedes, which he picked her up in 
earlier. She gets in the car, looks for her keys.
  She doesn't have any money, so she takes money out of the vehicle to 
call a cab, to pay for the cab so she could get away, and the cab later 
shows up.
  During this time, she is texting her friends, asking for them to come 
get her. The text messages maybe didn't make a whole lot of sense 
because of the condition that she is in.
  She eventually gets to the hospital, the place where sexual assault 
victims usually go first to get medical attention. She goes to the 
hospital there in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and while there, she told her 
story, even though she was somewhat still under the influence of drugs, 
probably. And while there, a Women and Gender Resource Center advocate 
shows up at the hospital.
  The hospital people take what we call in the vernacular in law 
enforcement, as you used to be, a rape kit. It is called a sexual 
assault kit now. They take that sexual assault kit and they perform 
that examination, but they didn't take any blood and they didn't take 
any urine and they didn't test Megan for whether she was under the 
influence of drugs. They did the sexual assault kit.
  Along the route, the sexual assault kit gets to the sheriff's 
department, and we don't know what happened to it after that. It was 
never tested. As far as I know, it hasn't been tested yet. They don't 
know where it is. Maybe the sheriff's department has it, maybe they 
don't, but that sexual assault kit, like I said, was never tested.
  So after she is there, or while she is there, the police, the 
sheriff's department show up and they question her briefly. It appears 
that these two homicide detectives heard her story, and they didn't 
take any notes about it. They just listened to her story.
  What transpired there maybe was not a lot of information given to the 
police, except she told her story. She told the police she didn't 
consent, that she may be under the influence of drugs, drug-induced 
rape, and they left.
  The next morning, Megan, staying up all this time, the police, either 
at the first or the second interview, wanted to know why she didn't 
physically resist, why she didn't fight back this older man. And she 
was under the influence of drugs.
  Under most laws in most States, she couldn't physically fight back, 
and

[[Page 12342]]

that is the lack of consent. She didn't give consent. And it is still 
sexual assault, but apparently not so to the sheriff's department in 
Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She didn't fight back.
  Now, I am older than you are, Mr. Speaker, but I remember the days of 
these old, archaic rape laws where, in many States, the victim had to 
fight almost until death. The statutory limitation on sexual assault or 
rape was 1 year. That is when the victim only had a year to have that 
case indicted. And there are some other things about the old law that 
we both know, but I will get to that, hopefully, later.
  But it was obvious to her, either at the first interview and at least 
the second interview, the sheriff's department did not believe her. 
When she told them who the alleged perpetrator was, Sweet T Bunn, they 
seemed to back off the prosecution.
  Sweet T Bunn comes from a family in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, well-known, 
prominent citizens. The Bunn folks run a construction company, probably 
built every road in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Everybody knew who they were. 
And they backed off, according to her, of the investigation, still not 
taking, apparently, any real notes.
  On the second interview later that morning with the police, the 
police started accusing her of committing a crime. So the victim no 
longer is the victim, but becomes the accused, the defendant, about the 
money that she took from Bunn's car so she could get a cab to flee the 
perpetrator.
  The police interviewed TJ Bunn. He first denied she was ever at his 
mansion, and then later he changed his story, as accused individuals 
tend to do, and then said it was consent, that she consented to 
everything and that this is not a criminal case. And the police further 
backed off and then later said to Megan: We think we are going to 
prosecute you for theft of that money to get home and get away from the 
offender unless you drop the charges, the accusations against Sweet T.
  Mr. Speaker, we need, as a community, to understand and put ourselves 
in the place of this girl who is alone. And I believe, all through that 
night, she made the best decisions she could to get help, and 
everywhere she turned, people turned her down.
  Now, I don't know what most victims would do in this case, but she 
didn't know what to do. She called her mom in Austin, Texas. Mom 
quickly gets in her car and starts driving to Alabama, as mothers do, 
wanting to know how she should handle this particular situation: she is 
becoming the accused. And that is the trump card that the police put on 
her: You back off the prosecution, and we won't prosecute you for theft 
and maybe other crimes that you committed.
  So Megan left, not knowing what to do.
  So the sheriff's department doesn't believe her, doesn't want to 
believe her, and takes the alleged perpetrator and makes him the victim 
and makes her the accused individual. So the sheriff's department has 
the rape kit--never tested. The sheriff's department is accusing the 
victim of committing a crime.
  So she seeks relief from the University of Alabama. She goes there 
and she talks to a lady who was a counselor for students at the 
University of Alabama, a female, and tells her the whole story again: 
No consent; I was sexually assaulted.
  After the story is told to the counselor, the counselor apparently 
says: I can't help you. I know the Bunn family. I have a relative that 
works for Bunn Construction. I cannot help you, and I am backing off 
and recusing myself of this case--the counselor.
  What does Megan do? Well, the university gives her another counselor, 
who I wouldn't say is a real counselor. It is a graduate assistant. And 
the graduate assistant talks to Megan and says: ``I can't talk to you 
until you take medication for your anxiety.''
  Well, no kidding she has anxiety because of what has happened to her 
over these several hours.
  And that was the last we heard of the University of Alabama physical 
therapist. She backs off because she has anxiety.
  The district attorney, eventually, about 3 weeks later, said: We are 
not prosecuting this case. No case, no sexual assault, believes the 
sheriff's department, believes it is consent, and they are not 
prosecuting the case.
  Later, it turns out, Mr. Speaker, and I don't know if this influenced 
these people's decisions or not, but we learn that the defendant's 
family, the construction company, gave financial contributions to the 
sheriff's department, to the district attorney's office campaign, and 
to the University of Alabama, where they apparently are big 
contributors. I don't know if that influenced all of this or not, but 
you can take it for what you want. But anyway, they backed off the 
case.
  Megan, because it is the summer break, leaves and goes back home to 
Texas. She wants to get away from the University of Alabama because she 
had seen the defendant on campus. He is not a student there. She had 
told the people on the campus: I am very worried about me because of 
this person being on campus.
  She leaves the university, asking the title IX folks to help her 
transfer her university education from the University of Alabama to 
SMU, and she leaves. Apparently, she did not get cooperation, according 
to her, for a couple of months from the title IX folks, which is 
another issue that I am not going to go into, and enrolls in the 
university at SMU, needing a letter from Alabama to get into another 
university, as all kids need to have nowadays.
  She is at SMU. She seeks medical help in Texas. The doctor told her 
that the findings were apparently post-traumatic stress, anxiety, 
depression, all from this criminal case that happened against her, 
always telling folks she didn't consent. She never changed her 
rendition of the case.
  She wasn't doing very well. She saw a counselor at SMU and wanted 
help with depression when she is filling out her medical history form 
that goes to the university at SMU in Dallas, Texas.

                              {time}  1345

  She said she had mental issues. She said that she had bad thoughts 
about living. And then later, on February 26, 2016, with that form 
laying next to her, Megan committed suicide. She took her life.
  Why? My opinion, because she never got any help. She couldn't get 
help from the hospital because of the urine test; no drug test, no 
blood test; the rape kit never analyzed by the police department, 
sheriff's department; the sheriff's department didn't believe her? Like 
I said, in my opinion, they didn't want to believe her.
  The university didn't help her. They gave her a graduate assistant to 
try to help her with her mental case, told her to get on medication.
  Mr. Speaker, Megan did everything that she should have done under 
those situations. It is easy for society, in cases like this, to always 
say to victims of crime, especially rape cases: You should have done 
this; you shouldn't have done that.
  And there is a lot of second-guessing going on in this case by a lot 
of people. But, as a prosecutor, former judge, I think she did the best 
she could to get help, and she got no help.
  When people are desperate, when they feel like nobody cares, that 
nobody is going to help them, in a sexual assault case, where--to me, 
that is one of the worst crimes that can be committed against a 
person--they are desperate, and she didn't think life was worth living 
because of this case.
  Over the years, I have learned a lot from sexual assault victims, and 
one thing that they all want is validation. They want validation from 
us--community, society, government--that that act they said happened to 
them did happen. That is what they want. Sometimes they want that more 
than prosecution or apprehension of the offender, is validation that we 
believe them.
  She didn't get that validation, except for her family, and so she 
took her own life. What a tragedy.
  So that is why I am here today. Megan can't talk about what happened 
to her, but we can. We, as Members of Congress, are really in the 
people business, and that is why I am in Congress. I know that is why 
you are in Congress.

[[Page 12343]]

  So what are we going to do about this? What has happened in the 
interim?
  Well, at the hospital, because of the failures--no drug testing, no 
urine testing, the loss of the sexual assault kit, rape kit, or not 
being analyzed--myself, Carolyn Maloney, Democrat from New York, and 
also, Terri Sewell, who represents this area in Alabama, have filed the 
Megan Rondini Act on her behalf.
  Now, what does that do? So this legislation will require hospitals in 
our country, wherever they are, to have a SAFE at that hospital. What 
is a SAFE? It is a Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner. Some hospitals do, 
some don't; but this law will require you have one at your hospital 24 
hours a day, 7 days a week, or be able to take a sexual assault victim 
to one place close by that has this type of examiner.
  It is a special recognition for people in the sexual assault 
business, whether they are a nurse or whether they are a doctor, and we 
filed that legislation. Maybe that would have helped in this case where 
the sexual assault examiner would have finished the examination, made 
sure that the testing was done, or had some examiner near this 
hospital. So we filed this. It is called the Megan Rondini Act. That is 
one of the pieces of legislation we filed.
  I want to talk about the law enforcement agency. Now, you know as 
much about law enforcement as anybody in Congress, but let me tell you 
the way I see this.
  They never tested the sexual assault kit, the rape kit, the urine 
sample. They questioned her because why didn't she resist? Why didn't 
she fight back?
  When a person is drug-induced in a sexual assault, they can't fight 
back. They certainly can't consent, but that is what they were asking 
her, even though that didn't apply in this case. She couldn't fight 
back. She didn't fight back because of what happened to her when she 
was drugged or under the influence of something.
  And then they accused her of being a criminal. Rather than examining 
her case and finishing her case, they went on to take the defendant's 
position, say they believed him, even though he gave contradictory 
stories later in this investigation.
  We have a piece of legislation that has already been filed to deal 
with sexual assault kits, and I have introduced legislation today to 
reauthorize SAFER. SAFER is a piece of legislation Congress needs to 
reauthorize to have rape kits throughout the country examined. There 
are thousands of sexual assault cases sitting on the shelves, sitting 
in warehouses; some have been destroyed they are so old, where law 
enforcement, government, has not analyzed those sexual assault rape 
kits.
  There are a lot of excuses made--there is not money, all of those 
things. They need to be examined in all criminal cases. SAFER provides 
funding to do that so that the backlogged evidence gets tested and so 
that it convicts the guilty and clears the innocent. That is the second 
piece of legislation that we have filed.
  The district attorney's office, after Megan committed suicide, after 
they had refused to do anything about the case, almost a year later, 
they took the case to a grand jury, and it was not indicted. It was no-
billed.
  Now, I have presented cases to the grand jury. I am sure you have 
testified before grand juries. Unfortunately, some district attorneys, 
I am not saying all, or even most--the grand jury does the will of the 
district attorney. If the district attorney encourages an indictment, 
that person is indicted. If they encourage and recommend a no-bill, not 
indicted, grand juries will do that.
  Some prosecutors don't offer advice. They let the grand jury make 
that decision because that is their decision. I don't know if that 
happened in this case or not. But they did decide to present the case 
to a grand jury, and it was not indicted. She was not indicted, or the 
defendant was not indicted.
  Of course, nothing could happen to her. She has already taken her own 
life.
  The university made some mistakes, in my opinion. The school victim 
advocate abandoned her at the hospital where she was.
  On campus, the counselor, even though hearing the case, full story, 
at the end--this is interesting--at the end, decided to recuse herself 
because she knew the Bunn family. She knew the Bunn family when this 
interview started. Why didn't she recuse herself before the victim 
tells the story again to another person, to another stranger? 
Interesting turn of events.
  Graduate assistant, in my opinion, didn't have any qualifications to 
order that she get medical treatment before she comes back to talk to 
the folks at the hospital.
  We have filed a resolution, it is a sense of Congress resolution, Mr. 
Speaker, calling on all universities to employ a full-time victim 
advocate on campus who deals with sexual assault victims, have that 
expertise. And it is an expertise. A victim advocate needs to be 
specified to be a sexual assault victim advocate, because, you can talk 
about a victim advocate, that could be somebody talking about a theft 
case or something, but you need a sexual assault victim advocate on 
campus, no matter what university this happens to be.
  It is a sense of Congress. It is a resolution that has been filed 
today.
  Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 34 minutes remaining.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, let me--this is Megan Rondini. This is 
the way she looked when she was a student. We have heard a lot about 
her, as we should.
  But now I want to talk about the family of the alleged perpetrator, 
Sweet T, and the Bunn family. Well-known business in the community. 
Good for them. Business is doing well. They give money to the 
university. As I mentioned, apparently they give money to the campaigns 
of the sheriff and the district attorney, and they make other 
contributions throughout the Tuscaloosa region. Apparently, everybody 
knows them.
  They are so concerned about this case that this is a full-page ad 
taken out of one of the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, newspapers this week 
defending their honor, as we would say in the South. And it goes into 
quite a bit of detail.
  What it does is attack the victim of this crime. It almost justifies 
the defendant's, the accused's, position. All through this ad, they 
talk about a lot of things. I want to read you just part of it. Here's 
just one paragraph talking about their three generations of civic 
involvement in Tuscaloosa, Alabama:

       We support education. We support law enforcement. We 
     support our hospital and civic. We are generous, and now we 
     are condemned as if it is a conspiracy.
       The Bunn family, for more than 70 years, have given their 
     time, energy, and resources to make our community a better 
     place to live. Now, according to some journalists, every act 
     of charity and good citizenship was nothing more than a large 
     standing conspiracy. If no deed goes unpunished then why 
     should anyone invest in our community to take the risk of 
     being a good citizen?

  They are defending their honor. They are defending Sweet T. And all 
through this ad, taken out this week, they never mention sympathy or 
compassion or sadness for the death of the victim in this crime. That 
seems very strange to me. Regardless of guilt or innocence, we know 
that a person took their life because of what happened. I find that 
very strange.
  They seem to protest too much--full-page ad in a local newspaper.
  The parents of Megan, Mike and Cindy Rondini, they are just folks who 
live in Austin, Texas. Robin, the aunt, she is a constituent of mine in 
Houston. And just listening to them talk, there sure is a different 
side of the story about compassion than what we hear from the Bunn 
folks.
  Mr. Speaker, I will try to sum this up. I appreciate your patience. I 
mentioned I have known a lot of sexual assault victims. Years ago, 
before you were born, I was prosecuting in Houston, Texas.

                              {time}  1400

  I am going to change the name of the victim in this case because of 
concerns about privacy for her family.
  Lisa was a student at the University of Houston, working a second 
job. She

[[Page 12344]]

leaves school one evening at about 9 o'clock p.m. or so. She is driving 
north on one of our interstates--or freeways, as we call them. She has 
car trouble. She pulls off the freeway, goes to a service station she 
thought was open. It was not open.
  An individual comes up to her, has a pistol--Luke, we will call him--
kidnaps her, sexually assaults her, and abandons her. She is later 
found in a very traumatic emotional state somewhere in the area. The 
police are called. They figure out who the perpetrator was, they go out 
and arrest him, investigate the case.
  One thing I want to mention that happens in most cases that didn't 
happen in Megan's case, the police didn't talk to any witnesses. They 
didn't talk to the witnesses at the bar. They didn't talk to any of 
Megan's friends. They didn't talk to anybody. They just talked to the 
alleged perpetrator and to Megan. No investigation.
  Anyway, the investigation is done, Luke is captured. It turns out he 
is an ex-con for sexual assault--rape, as we called it in those days.
  Lisa convinced herself that she would testify. She comes to the 
courthouse. I prosecuted the case. She went through every detail.
  And you remember, Mr. Speaker, years ago, before the law started 
having justice in it, sexual assault victims had to tell their whole 
sexual life before strangers. Of course the defendant, you never could 
go into the sexual life of the defendant, but the defense could always 
go into it on a victim.
  She goes through the trial. Twelve right-thinking folks on a jury 
convicted the offender. That same jury gave him 99 years in the 
penitentiary of Texas, what he earned, what he deserved.
  We would hope that life would go on, that justice is done, and that 
everybody is satisfied that justice is done. But that doesn't always 
work.
  Lisa lost her job, dropped out of school, started abusing alcohol, 
drugs, a lot of stuff. She married, had two kids. Her husband, being 
the kind of guy he was, apparently decided to leave her and took the 
two kids and went somewhere else.
  It wasn't long after that I got a call from Lisa's mom telling me 
that she had taken her own life and left a note saying: ``I am tired of 
running from Luke in my nightmares.''
  Another victim years ago, and I give her example only because we need 
to understand that this is one of the worst things that can happen to a 
person. One other case. I prosecuted a case where a guy was charged 
with sexually assaulting an elderly woman. She came to the courthouse 
to testify. Sadie. I will use her first name. She was dressed in a dark 
gray suit, long skirt, double-breasted coat. She had on a dark gray hat 
and a little veil over her face.
  She took the witness stand. I asked her: What happened when this 
perpetrator that you have identified came into your house?
  She said: He committed an act worse than death.
  I asked: What do you mean? What did he do? Did he assault you? What 
did he do?
  She said: He committed an act worse than death.
  Finally, she testified to the legal requirement of penetration.
  To some sexual assault victims, rape is a fate worse than death. To 
Megan, she got the death penalty for being a sexual assault victim. She 
couldn't quite handle it. Why? Because no one was there to make sure 
that she did handle it.
  Mr. Speaker, sexual assault predators--and that is what they are. You 
can call it rape, you can call it sexual assault, you can call it a 
fate worse than death--sometimes steal the soul of the victim. That is 
the way the victims feel. Everything that was important to them is gone 
because of the perpetrator.
  I think the best evidence, unfortunately, that Megan, in my opinion, 
was telling the truth throughout all of this was that she took her 
life. That is what makes this case so sad.
  Sexual assault or rape, Mr. Speaker, is never the fault of the 
victim. Never. Never. And some folks want to look at this and say: 
Megan, you should have done this, you should have done that, you 
shouldn't have gone with him, you shouldn't have been drunk, you 
shouldn't have allowed him to get you intoxicated on drugs, whatever.
  I think most of them do the best they can in trying to get justice.
  She went to the hospital and was denied help. The sheriff's 
department, in her opinion, denied help. In fact, they accused her of 
being the perpetrator. They didn't investigate, they didn't talk to 
witnesses. She goes to a university that gets Federal funds trying to 
get help and was denied. Denied. Denied. Denied.
  She leaves, she goes back to Texas, tries to enroll in another 
university, and before all that is completed, she takes her life.
  I hope we can understand not just this case and not just Megan, but 
we can understand the plight and the awful things that happen to some 
of our young women in our country.
  The same Constitution that protects defendants of crime, protects 
victims of crime. They are entitled to equal protection under the law. 
I am talking about victims of crime. If we understand that principle, 
we will understand justice. We will understand what we are all about; 
that we are in the people business. In this House of Representatives on 
this late Friday afternoon, we need to understand that.
  Justice means different things to different folks. But justice must 
be balanced between the rights of the accused and the rights of the 
victim so that we do the right thing for the right reason in every 
case.
  Mr. Speaker, you know this in doing investigations in your capacity 
before, and I want to reiterate this. Sometimes victims just never get 
over it. They just never do. We should be there with them. I am talking 
about the community should be there with them and at least hear them 
out and make a rational and just decision, regardless of who the 
offender is: poor, rich, famous, somebody in the community, big 
contributor, whatever; and no matter who the victim is, same 
background: poor, rich, famous. That should go away in determining 
justice. Otherwise, we don't have justice for all. We only have justice 
for a few.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time, I appreciate the patience of the 
House of Representatives when I wanted to talk today about Megan 
Rondini. This case bothers me as a father of four kids, three of them 
girls; twelve grandchildren, eight of them girls. It bothers me as a 
Member of the House of Representatives and as a former person who 
worked at the courthouse for over 30 years.
  I hope it bothers the House of Representatives so we move forward 
with trying to get help for folks like this, that we pass legislation 
that requires a safe officer at hospitals, that we pass legislation as 
a House resolution that it is a sense of Congress that all universities 
have on campus a sexual assault victim's advocate or coordinator, as 
the law says.
  I thank Carolyn Maloney from New York and Terri Sewell from Alabama, 
who represents this area, for cosponsoring this bill.
  I ask the leadership to move this legislation forward. But let's not 
forget about Megan's family and Megan's case and the thing that 
happened to her that just can't happen anymore. Justice can be served, 
it shall be served, because justice is what we do, Mr. Speaker.
  And that is just the way it is.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask how much time is left.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 17 minutes remaining.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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