Editor’s note: this article contains discussion around rape and sexual violence.

How much sexual trauma do survivors need to share before we start to dismantle collegiate rape culture?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. We’ve been here before. Again and again. Me Too. We Can DU Better. I am Jane Doe. 

Every few years, the details of yet another young woman’s sexual trauma spark collective outrage. We wear jeans in April and hold hands in solidarity as we Take Back the Night.

We collect our rape-prevention swag—whistles and personal alarms adorn our keychains; pink pepper spray canisters hang camouflaged among beaded bag charms. We rage-cry at “The Vagina Monologues,” then walk each other home along well-lit paths. When the next hashtag starts trending, we know what to do: we jump in and share our stories. 

Ask any woman you know. Curiously, there are always more stories she can tell.

The Cornell Daily Sun broke the story of Jane Doe’s lawsuit, filed in New York civil court Sept. 16, 2026—exactly 20 years after I was raped a few blocks from the University of Denver campus. The more I learn about the Cornell 7 case, the more parallels I recognize with my own. Cornell’s Jane Doe was a member of Delta Delta Delta sorority. I also was a Tri Delta, here at DU.

Student journalists broke the story of her alleged gang rape at a fraternity house. Student journalism is how I met the man who raped me. In May 2006, I accepted one final story assignment as a features reporter for The Clarion. I covered a student theater production at the Newman Center. I watched the play, interviewed the cast, wrote the story.

Then fate—and the alphabet—sat me next to one of the actors during DU’s hours-long spring commencement ceremony. My new acquaintance persisted through Facebook messages all summer until I finally agreed to attend one of his house parties that September.

Remember our unspoken safety rules, ladies?  I brought a friend. Our other roommate knew where we were and when we planned to be home. I had a couple of beers over several hours.

We took the party downtown, and he bought me a cocktail. I didn’t accept a drink from a stranger, but from a friendly, familiar face.  Not long after, the proverbial lights went out. Suddenly, terrifyingly, everything went black. What happened next exists in fragmented memories as my consciousness waned.

I followed the blueprint that had been ingrained in me for “how to not get raped.”  And guess what? I still got f****** raped.

It turns out, none of those preventive actions can guarantee our safety if someone decides to violate us. It has taken me two decades to fully accept that. Like Cornell’s Jane Doe, my perpetrator was someone I sorta, kinda knew. Just familiar enough to create the illusion of safety.

Here’s where it gets messy and confusing, but I can’t silently watch as strangers on the internet rip apart Jane Doe for actions they absolutely do not understand. She called and texted her alleged assailants afterward.  Yeah? Well, I went to brunch with mine.

Survivors don’t always recognize rape for what it is in real time. Trauma can fragment our memories, and substances can compound those gaps. Behaviors may appear illogical to those outside of the situation.

The morning after my assault, I went to brunch with my rapist, his friends and two of my roommates. I felt like something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t yet remember, reconcile or admit to myself what had happened. I was 23 years old, confused and trying to force incomplete memories into a socially acceptable explanation: “Did I just get really drunk and hook up with someone?”

That didn’t feel true. But if not, what happened? I couldn’t go there yet. So, I went for pancakes.

Society expects rape to be black and white, cut and dry. You were sexually assaulted or you weren’t. How could it be up for debate? How could a survivor’s understanding change over time—unless she is lying?

I know how, because mine did.

Self-blame can feel safer than accepting what someone else has done to you. If it’s my fault, maybe next time I can make different choices and keep it from happening again. In phone recordings recently released in connection with Jane Doe’s litigation, she tried to reconstruct what happened to her while the men she accused offered their own explanations.

I did that too.

After my assault, I contacted mutual friends and acquaintances. I sent messages asking them to help me make sense of what happened. Some of them—including my own sorority sisters—told me I had it wrong. He was a good guy, and he wouldn’t have done those things.

Even my roommate initially struggled with the idea. She remembered my perpetrator “taking care” of me when I was sick. He brought me water, took me to the bathroom, put me in his bed so I could sleep while the party continued. He checked on me. 

On the surface, it looked caring, which made it harder for me to reconcile the flashes of him holding me down and penetrating me while I faded in and out of consciousness. At some point that morning, one of his friends came into the room and jumped onto the bed while I lay there incapacitated.

I don’t know what he saw. I don’t know what happened after I lost consciousness again. But no one got me out of that room.

Jane Doe’s complaint alleges something more extensive: that messages in a fraternity group chat invited and encouraged additional men to participate in her assault.

By the time I began to suspect I had been drugged, the window for useful toxicology testing had passed. A week or two later, I remember my doctor telling me that the symptoms I described—including sudden incapacitation, vomiting, profound memory loss and periods of unconsciousness—were consistent with gamma-hydroxybutyrate, or GHB. I also remember her seeing internal injuries during my exam.

When we ask questions like, “Why did her story change,” “Why doesn’t she remember,” “Why didn’t she say no” and “Why didn’t she fight back,” we are reacting to the myth that anyone who does not present as a “perfect victim” must not be credible.

That expectation is unrealistic. While working on this essay, I had a discussion with my husband, Jeremy Vogt, a licensed clinical psychologist who regularly works with patients experiencing trauma and grief. He pointed me toward a body of research on “unrecognized rape,” a term describing assaults that victims don’t initially label as rape because what happened does not resemble the stereotypical, stranger-in-a-dark-alley scenario.

Familiarity can create another illusion of safety and helps explain the delay some survivors experience in recognizing that they were in fact sexually assaulted. Women can follow every prevention strategy we have memorized since childhood. We can lock our doors, travel in groups, carry protection and watch our drinks. But half of the prevention blueprint is still missing: what we teach boys and men.

What do they learn about recognizing—and stopping—the danger they or their friends may pose? What are they taught to do when another man crosses a line? How about when a woman is too intoxicated to protect herself, or when a group chat turns her into a sexual commodity?

We scrutinize what women drank, wore, remembered, texted, did and said. Whether their accounts evolved. When they sought medical care. If they reported their assault “correctly.” 

Why do we spend so much energy scrutinizing traumatized women instead of the men harming them—and the men around them who could intervene? And why do institutions keep failing to establish and enforce those expectations? When I eventually reported my assault to the Denver Police Department, I remember the detective asking me multiple questions about the simple polyester brown dress I wore that night—when I bought it, why I bought it, where I bought it.

You know what I don’t remember him asking? Why did nobody at that party intervene when your assailant isolated you while you were unconscious?

Sexual violence is often motivated by power and control. Teaching women to adjust their behaviors is not a sufficient prevention strategy; we have to prioritize teaching men to recognize and stop creating the conditions in which sexual violence occurs and is excused.

“We [men] have been far too complacent,” Jeremy told me. “It can be scary to stand up to your ‘bros.’ You may risk losing friends, but that’s far less than what victims lose.”

In her complaint, the Cornell plaintiff said she still feels the impact of what she alleges happened to her two years ago. I still feel mine after 20. It’s not all-consuming every day, but it’s still there.

Jeremy often compares grief and trauma to carrying a heavy backpack. He’ll say that eventually, you become so accustomed to the weight on your shoulders that you stop noticing it—until something comes up that makes you feel it again.

Although the Cornell story made me feel it, the weight has indeed grown lighter with time. I have a family, a career and a life that extends far beyond what happened to me on Sept. 16, 2006. For years, I believed something I did or failed to do must have caused what happened. I needed to be less trusting and more cautious so I’d never end up in a position to be violated again. 

Later, I shifted self-blame into a spiritual explanation: Maybe I had been destined to experience this abuse so I could eventually help other people through similar pain.  I no longer believe that either. Nobody needs to suffer to be kind, empathetic or to help other people.

Today, I understand why I was raped: Because someone chose to rape me.

I never got legal justice for what happened to me—and I never will, since my rapist is now deceased. I hope Jane Doe gets a more satisfactory outcome in her case, and that the weight on her shoulders gets lighter too.

Most of all, I hope we can shift our societal expectations for men’s behavior instead of continuing to hand women more whistles. The burden cannot remain with women and survivors. We need a blueprint for men. Better yet, let’s expect men to create it, share it and uphold it so that work does not become one more invisible responsibility assigned to women.

Finally, the “not all men” defense misses the point. As Jeremy said, the response from decent men cannot simply be, “But you can trust me.” No—we can’t. Women cannot know in advance which men are safe simply because those men say they are. And declaring yourself “one of the good ones” does nothing to change the culture around you.

The correct response is: “You’re right. We have a problem. Here’s what I am going to do about it.”

I began with a rhetorical question, so I’ll end with a real one: What are YOU going to “DU” to help dismantle collegiate rape culture?

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Amber D’Angelo is a DU alumna and communications professional with a bachelor’s degree in journalism studies (’06) and a master’s degree in communication, public relations and marketing (’12). As an undergraduate, she was a reporter and copy editor for The Clarion. She and her family live in Aurora, Colo.