Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

  The Missoula County attorney’s decision not to prosecute infuriated Kelsey Belnap and her family. Gang rape is an especially heinous crime. It seemed likely that the men who allegedly assaulted Kelsey might also have assaulted other women, and might rape again if not held accountable. The Belnaps believe a more motivated prosecutor than Van Valkenburg would have ordered a more thorough investigation, charged the perpetrators with rape, and either persuaded them to make a plea deal or taken them to trial—where he or she could have discredited the testimony of Kelsey’s assailants and, possibly, persuaded a jury to convict them.

  Instead, as Terry Belnap lamented to Gwen Florio, “We were left with no answers and no further investigation….I really felt that we were brushed off.” When Terry Belnap asked her daughter if she wanted the family to hire a lawyer to pressure Van Valkenburg to prosecute, according to Florio’s article in the Missoulian, Kelsey Belnap said, “Mom, they’re football players and nobody’s gonna listen to me. They’ll make my life hell.”

  —

  GWEN FLORIO’S PIECE about Kelsey Belnap appeared on the front page of the Missoulian on December 21, 2011. When Allison Huguet read that Belnap had shared her story with Florio in the hope that it would prevent other women from being sexually assaulted, it boosted Huguet’s confidence that reporting Beau Donaldson to the police had been the right decision. She was further encouraged when Detective Baker learned from nurse Claire Francoeur that Huguet’s rape kit, along with other evidence pertaining to the assault, had not in fact been destroyed and was being stored at the Montana Department of Justice in Helena, the state capital. On December 22, Baker received this evidence from Francoeur.

  A day later, after obtaining a warrant, Baker asked Huguet to come to the police station and call Donaldson from her cell phone while Baker surreptitiously recorded the conversation, hoping to obtain a confession that could be used as evidence.

  “When I filed the police report,” Huguet told me, “this call was something Detective Baker warned me I might have to do. But it wasn’t something I thought I’d actually be able to do. It was really difficult.” Baker plugged Huguet’s phone into a recording device, and she dialed Donaldson’s number, but he didn’t answer. Baker had Huguet wait ten minutes and call Donaldson again. When he failed to answer this time, Baker asked her to leave a message on Donaldson’s voice mail asking him to call her back.

  After half an hour, Beau Donaldson hadn’t called, so Baker turned the recorder off and told Huguet they’d try again in a few days. As they were walking out of the interview room, however, her phone began ringing. “It was Beau,” she said, “but Detective Baker didn’t want me to answer because the recorder wasn’t hooked up.” She let it ring, then called Donaldson back after the recorder had been reconnected to her phone. “That was probably the most awkward conversation of my life,” Huguet said. “I don’t even remember how I started it. I think I told him that I was becoming upset about what had happened….Then I told him that I had read about the sexual assaults that had been going on at the university and wondered if he was involved. He got very defensive immediately. He was like, ‘I don’t know anything about that! I didn’t have anything to do with that!’ He was freaking out.”

  Huguet pointed out that when Donaldson had apologized, the day after raping her, he’d promised that he would seek help for his abuse of drugs and alcohol, but from the way he’d acted when she’d run into him at the Mo Club just before Thanksgiving, it appeared he hadn’t made any progress on that front. According to Huguet, “Beau said, ‘Oh, so you think it’s a problem that I have a few drinks with my friends?’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, I do think it’s a problem, because that’s exactly how you ended up raping me.’ ”

  As Allison Huguet spoke on the phone with Beau Donaldson, Detective Baker was coaching her about what to say, hoping to get Donaldson to make a clear, unambiguous confession. Eventually Donaldson admitted, “Yes, I took advantage of you,” adding that he felt “shitty” about it.

  A little later, Donaldson told Huguet that he’d sought treatment from two different psychotherapists, prompting her to ask, “And you told them you raped me?”

  “Yes,” Donaldson replied.

  “At that point I thought the police had enough,” Huguet said. But Detective Baker disagreed. He was a very dedicated cop. His father had been a law enforcement officer for the city of Missoula for thirty-one years. His grandfather had worked for the Montana Highway Patrol for thirty-four years. Baker, who was forty-four years old, had joined the Missoula Police Department when he was twenty-one. He’d spend thirteen of his twenty-three years on the force as a detective and had been the lead investigator on approximately seven hundred cases, nearly one hundred of which were sexual assaults. He knew all too well how easily even a slam-dunk rape case could be sabotaged by unforeseeable developments. And he understood that there was no better way to ensure a conviction than to get an incontrovertible confession from the accused rapist.

  Baker urged Huguet to stay on the phone with Donaldson a little longer and to ask him to explain why he’d raped her. She reluctantly agreed. “But when I kept asking Beau why he did it,” she recalled, “he kept saying, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ Finally, he just got really angry and started yelling at me. So I said, ‘Okay, well, if you can’t give me an explanation of why you did this to me, then I’m going to have to go to the police.’ And he said, ‘Okay. If that’s what you have to do…’ And then I hung up.”

  As soon as the call ended, Huguet lost her composure and started sobbing. “That call was extremely emotional,” she said. “Beau was someone I had cared deeply about for most of my life. Even though he raped me, I couldn’t help still caring about him on some level, and I knew I had just sealed his fate—that he was now going to be in a world of trouble because of what I had just gotten him to say on tape. But at the same time, that was exactly what I had wanted to do. When I explained to Detective Baker why I was bawling, he was like, ‘Allison, you need to keep in mind that you are doing the right thing.’ ”

  Eleven days later, Baker believed he had gathered enough evidence to put together a bombproof case against Donaldson. In addition to recording the phone conversation and obtaining Huguet’s rape kit, he had conducted extensive interviews with Huguet’s mother, Sam Erschler, Keely Williams, and Claire Francoeur, the nurse at First Step who had examined Allison. Baker applied for a warrant to arrest Donaldson, and received it at 2:30 p.m. on January 6, 2012.

  Two hours later, Baker, Detective Mark Blood, and three uniformed Missoula police officers drove to Donaldson’s house, asked if he would agree to be interviewed, and then transported him to the police station. When they got there, Baker confiscated Donaldson’s cell phone and advised him of his Miranda rights. Donaldson said he understood his rights and consented to talk to Baker and Blood without an attorney present.

  During the videotaped interview that ensued, Donaldson initially claimed that he and Huguet had fallen asleep together on the couch in his living room and that Huguet had willingly been making out with him, leading him to believe that the intercourse they had was consensual. After Baker pointed out to Donaldson that Keely Williams had clearly stated that she saw Huguet sleeping alone on the couch, however, Donaldson eventually confessed that he had “pulled Allison’s pants down and engaged in sexual intercourse with her while she was sleeping.” According to the case report submitted by Baker, “Beau admitted that due to the fact Allison was asleep, he knew it was nonconsensual sex and he…had ‘raped’ her.”

  After interviewing Beau Donaldson for just under an hour, Detective Baker returned Donaldson’s cell phone and allowed him to call his father. Then Baker placed Donaldson under arrest and drove him to the Missoula County jail, where he was booked on a felony charge of sexual intercourse without consent—the legal term for rape in Montana. Bond was initially set at $100,000. By this time, Donaldson’s father had arranged for a prominent Missoula attorney, Milt Datsopoulos, to represent Beau.
Datsopoulos had assisted many University of Montana athletes with their legal problems over the years—so many, in fact, that Griz fans often joked, “If you’re guilty, call Uncle Milty!” Extremely unhappy that Donaldson had talked to Detective Baker without an attorney, Datsopoulos phoned Baker while Donaldson was being booked and told him that under no circumstances could he speak further with Donaldson.

  Detective Baker is a large man with a comportment that can be intimidating, but he is uncommonly empathic. He appreciates how difficult it can be for a rape victim to go to the police. He knows that the criminal justice system frequently compounds the trauma of being raped and, way too often, fails to hold rapists accountable. So instead of phoning Allison Huguet to tell her that Beau Donaldson had been arrested, Baker and Detective Blood drove across town to Office Solutions & Services to notify Huguet in person that Donaldson was in jail and had given them a full confession.

  At 8:11 that evening, an hour before Baker had even broken the news to Huguet, a disappointed Grizzly supporter using the screen name “grizfan1984” announced on a popular Internet forum, eGriz.com,

  Just read the jail roster and Beau Donaldson has been arrested again this time for sexual intercourse without consent aka rape, $100,000 bail looks like he won’t be playing for the griz anymore.

  At 9:31, someone with the screen name “grizindabox” posted,

  It cannot be true, he is from Montana!

  At 10:43, “PlayerRep” posted,

  I know nothing about the facts, but I know Donaldson and I have doubts that rape occurred or that this will stick. I think Donaldson is a good kid. I know good kids can be caught up with date rape-type things too, but my instincts tell me that he didn’t rape anyone.

  In the middle of the night, an article by Gwen Florio about Donaldson’s arrest went up on the Missoulian website, impelling an angry Griz supporter calling himself “Sportin’ Life” to post the following about Donaldson’s arrest on eGriz at 5:08 a.m.:

  This has got to be Gwen Florio’s fault entirely. This is really a new low for her, stooping to this just to push her anti-football agenda.

  At 9:08 a.m., “jcu27” posted,

  First off, chicks exaggerate on rape. Second off, she could sucked his dick and still got rape just because she said she didn’t want it later on. Third off, no justice system actually works. Only the people involved actually know what happened. And a lot of people lie.

  * * *

  *1 pseudonym

  *2 pseudonym

  PART TWO

  Before the Law Sits a Gatekeeper

  We can finally all agree that women want to have sex. Variously portrayed in the past as tamers of men and tenders of children, we’re now deemed well endowed with horniness. But does that mean we experience desire in the same way that men do? My lust tells me we don’t. Mine, I confess, isn’t blind or monumental or animal. It comes with an endless internal monologue—or maybe dialogue, or maybe babel. My desire is always guessing, often second-guessing. Female lust is a powerful force, but it surges in the form of an interrogation, rather than a statement. Not I want this but Do I want this? What exactly do I want? How about now? And now?

  CLAIRE DEDERER

  “Why Is It So Hard for Women to Write About Sex?” The Atlantic, March 2014

  CHAPTER SIX

  The thumping heart of downtown Missoula is a compact grid of shops, offices, government agencies, restaurants, and bars jammed between the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks and the Clark Fork River. Just to the southeast, on the other side of the river, is the University of Montana campus, accessible via a pair of four-lane bridges for vehicle traffic, and two much smaller bridges for pedestrians and cyclists. Within the eight-by-four-block downtown core are a dozen pubs and bars that fill with UM students every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening when school is in session.

  On September 22, 2011, Kerry Barrett, a UM senior from New Jersey, went to a pub called Sean Kelly’s with four friends. It was a Thursday night, and the weekly bacchanal known as “Thirsty Thursday” was in full swing—a tradition that has become so prevalent on campuses nationwide that a great many students now avoid enrolling in classes that meet on Friday mornings. Missoula was rocking.

  At Sean Kelly’s, Barrett made the acquaintance of a tall, athletic student named Zeke Adams,* who socialized with Barrett and her friends for much of the evening. Barrett says she and Adams were attracted to each other, and when he started kissing her she reciprocated. Around 1:30 Friday morning, by which time Barrett and Adams were both intoxicated, they headed to another bar, the Badlander, with one of Barrett’s girlfriends, who departed for home a little later. “Zeke seemed trustworthy,” Barrett told me, “so I felt okay with my friends leaving us.” Both Barrett and Adams lived near Higgins Avenue, a major north-south arterial that bisects the downtown grid, and after last call at the Badlander, at 2:00 a.m., they started walking together down Higgins toward their respective apartments.

  Zeke Adams lived just across the bridge that spanned the Clark Fork; Kerry Barrett lived a mile farther south. “When we got to Zeke’s place,” she remembered, “he was like, ‘Why don’t you come inside?’ So I said okay. But before I even went in the door, I told him, ‘I’m not sleeping with you. If that’s what you’re expecting, I’m just going to go home.’ He said, ‘No, no. I don’t expect that at all. Just come in. We can hang out.’ So we went inside.” Instead of sitting in the living room of the small apartment, however, Adams suggested that they go to his bedroom to avoid waking his roommate.

  Barrett followed Adams into his bedroom, where they talked about an abstract painting a friend had painted for him. Then Adams turned down the lights, they reclined on the bed, and started making out. “This was consensual,” Barrett explained. “I really did like him, what I’d known of him at that point.” Eventually, Adams pulled her pants and underwear down to the middle of her thighs and inserted his fingers into her vagina. This, too, was consensual, Barrett made clear, “but then he started getting a little aggressive, which made me feel uncomfortable.” So she told him to stop, put all of her clothing back on, reiterated that she didn’t want to have sex with him, and said she was leaving.

  Adams urged her not to go, because it was 3:00 in the morning. As Barrett remembered it, he said, “You’re wasted. Stay over and I’ll drive you home in the morning. You know I’m a nice guy and nothing is going to happen.”

  “I actually wasn’t that drunk—not nearly as wasted as he was,” Barrett said, “but before you learn the realities of sexual assault, you’re taught that it’s dangerous to walk alone at night, because strangers are out to get you. The safer option seemed to be to stay at his place. So that’s what I did.”

  In a recorded statement Adams later gave to the police, he confirmed Barrett’s account: “I said, ‘Well, you don’t have to go.’…She laid back down in my bed. She told me she didn’t want to have sex with me—and that was fine with me, and I said okay.”

  Fully clothed, with her skinny jeans now securely zipped up and buttoned, she fell asleep in his bed. Approximately thirty minutes later, she said, “I woke up to him completely naked, and my pants—which are very tight and not easy to pull off—were down by my ankles.” Adams was spooning her from behind, rubbing his penis against her back, and then he tried to insert it into her vagina. Adams was six feet, three inches tall and weighed 170 pounds; Barrett stood five feet, seven inches and weighed 135 pounds. “Waking up to a big guy like that trying to rape me,” she said, “was terrifying.” Barrett frantically pushed him away and tugged her pants up, but Adams yanked them back down and attempted to penetrate her vagina a second time.

  “I pushed him off again,” Barrett said, “and at that point I got up, turned the light on, and got my stuff. He was just sitting there, staring at me. He didn’t say anything. I’ll never forget that stare.” Barrett fled Adams’s apartment in shock, crying, and walked the two blocks to Higgins Avenue, where she called one of the girlfriends who’d been at S
ean Kelly’s earlier in the evening. When the friend arrived and found Barrett sobbing inconsolably, she asked what had happened. “I choked out, ‘He tried to rape me!’ ” Barrett remembered. “And then we just sat there and cried hysterically together. Neither of us knew what to do.”

  They picked up another friend, who lived in a dorm on the UM campus, and the three women discussed whether to report the assault to the police. Around 4:00 a.m., Barrett called her parents in New Jersey, and her father—a retired police lieutenant—convinced her to go to the Missoula police station, where she was interviewed by an officer named Brian Vreeland on a bench in the entrance to the police department. According to Barrett, Vreeland asked her, “What do you want to come of this?”

  Taken aback by the question, Barrett replied that she didn’t know. “I’m not a lawyer or anything,” Vreeland said, “but since no one saw you, and you were fooling around before it happened, it’s hard to really prove anything.”

  Officer Vreeland finished taking her statement, then asked Barrett to get in his patrol car and guide him and another officer, Kurt Trowbridge, to Adams’s apartment. “I didn’t know the exact address,” Barrett said, “but I knew I could identify it. By then it was probably close to five in the morning. It was still dark. Before we got into his car, Vreeland said to me, ‘Oh, and one more thing: Do you have a boyfriend?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. Why?’ And he said something to the effect of ‘Well, sometimes girls cheat on their boyfriends, and regret it, and then claim they were raped.’ ” Although this struck Barrett as a strange and inappropriate thing for a police officer to tell a woman who had just been sexually assaulted, she wasn’t thinking clearly, because she was still in shock. “So I just said, ‘Oh, okay,’ ” she explained, “and let it go.”