College of Charleston, family at odds over attack

She remembers the attack through fuzzy flashes of violence. He is on top of her -- grabbing, holding, violating. She screams for him to stop, warm tears stinging her face. He holds her closer and tells her to smile for him.

The 18-year-old woman's voice trembled as she recalled the Oct. 23 attack in her College of Charleston dorm room. The memories are painful, particularly because her accused attacker is a man she considered a friend.

But the teen and her family also carry frustration and a sense of indignity about the way the college handled the assault. Her name is not being used because The Post and Courier does not identify alleged rape victims.

She and her mother applaud campus police for making an arrest in the case. But they fault school administrators for failing to reach out to help in the attack's aftermath. They also question why other students weren't alerted to the attack and why officials won't consider changes to campus housing policy to prevent similar incidents in the future.

"The college just doesn't seem to care," the mother said. "No one from there has called to say, 'We're sorry this happened to you. What can we do to help?' We've had to initiate everything, and that's not right."

Not so, said college spokesman Mike Robertson. He said victim advocates and the dean of student affairs have spent a good deal of time trying to work with the family and accommodate their needs.

But some of their requests, such as banning or limiting opposite-sex visits in dorms at night, can't be accomplished without a major change to long-standing policy, he said.

"Over the years, we've had very few problems with that," he said, "and most students like the policy the way it is."

Attacked in dorm

The teen's problems started when she attended a Halloween party on King Street with a girlfriend. She met up with a male friend from her hometown and he served her beer and shots of alcohol, she said.

She now wonders if something was placed in her drinks to make her black out, as the night grew fuzzy when she returned to Berry Residence Hall about 1 a.m., she said.

The teen said public safety officers were in the lobby and witnessed her male friend "pitching a fit" and pressuring her to let him come up to her room because he had nowhere to stay. Her girlfriend reportedly advised her against doing so, she said, but she was in no condition to make decisions at this point.

"The security guards didn't do anything, and I apparently end up signing him in," the teen said.

The teen said she told the young man to sleep on the couch, then she crawled into bed and blacked out. "When I came to, I was fully undressed and he was on top of me."

She said she pushed him off and told him "No." He backed off until she passed out and then went after her again, she said. The pattern repeated itself through the night, she said.

In the morning, she awoke feeling terribly ill. "He sat on the side of my bed and said, 'Wow, that was wrong of me, but I'm not going to deny I enjoyed it.' " she said.

The teen said she didn't tell anyone about the attack because she was afraid of him and didn't want to have to go through the ordeal of a trial. She tried to push it out of her mind, but it started affecting her sleep and appetite.

She finally confided in her mother at Thanksgiving and reported the attack to campus police a few days later, she said.

Campus police arrested 20-year-old Diego Landa-Bonilla of West Ashley on Dec. 7 and charged him with third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

He is accused of forcing sex on the teen while she was intoxicated. An arrest affidavit notes that the teen's suite-mate heard her repeatedly telling Landa-Bonilla, "No, I don't want to" that night.

Landa-Bonilla, a student at the Art Institute of Charleston, is free on $30,000 bail. Neither he nor his public defender could be reached for comment.

Did they do enough?

The teen and her mother said they were surprised that campus officials did not send out an email alert to students and faculty telling them of the attack.

The teen's mom said the college made little effort to reach out to her daughter and offer assistance. The mother said College of Charleston President George Benson didn't return her calls.

"They seem to be wanting to keep it hush-hush and sweep it under the rug," she said.

The mother said the public safety officers should have intervened that night when they saw a man pressuring her intoxicated daughter to let him upstairs. There should be a policy requiring such intervention, she said.

She said she has spoken to Dean of Students Jeri Cabot about restricting opposite-sex visitation at night or making other housing policy changes to prevent similar attacks from occurring.

School officials indicated they aren't willing to consider such changes. They offered to let her daughter out of her housing contract if she wants to move off campus, she said.

Robertson, the college spokesman, said the College of Charleston's visitation policies mirror those of other public colleges and universities in South Carolina, with the exception of The Citadel military college.

Students can enact tougher regulations if they deem necessary, and each has the ability to decide whom they invite to their rooms, he said.

All students are provided with a copy of the housing rules and should be familiar with how the dorms operate, Robertson said. In this case, the teen chose to sign the male friend in that night, which granted him access to the dorm, he said.

Investigators spoke with the two officers on duty that night, and neither recalled anything about the incident or the state the teen was in, according to a police report. Robertson noted that the college immediately banned Landa-Bonilla from campus after his arrest.

Robertson said no alert was issued to the campus because the rape wasn't reported until a month later, the teen said she knew her alleged attacker and police made an arrest within days of her report. There appeared to be no imminent danger to other students or faculty, he said.

Robertson insisted school officials have been working closely with the family to help. Benson did not speak with them because the matter was already being handled by school officials with expertise in handling sexual assaults, he said.

"I'm not sure what (the mother) means," he said. "We have worked with her every step of the way."

Melonea Locklair Marek, executive director of People Against Rape in North Charleston, said attacks like the one the teen experienced happen all the time in the area.

Her organization has been trying to work out an arrangement with the college to provide sexual assault information and education to incoming students to help raise awareness about this threat, she said.

The college's crime statistics show six rapes were reported on campus last year, five of which occurred in residence halls.

Marek commended campus police for their quick action in this case and applauded the work of victim advocates.

But she too has reservations about opposite-sex visitation at night, and she thinks the college missed the boat in failing to tell students about the incident.

"I understand what they were saying," she said. "But when you consider that 80 percent of rape cases are acquaintance rape, I think you are doing a disservice to students not to warn them. It's important to know that this happened in a dorm, and we need to be talking about it."

Reach Glenn Smith at 937-5556 or on Twitter at @glennsmith5.