Five Charged In Videotaped Rape

The 18-year-old woman couldn’t remember what happened after she went to a college Halloween party. Then other students started telling her about the videotape going around.

Investigators say five members of the Southwestern Michigan College basketball team raped the woman and videotaped themselves in the act.

The woman, also a student, had passed out after drinking at the party at an apartment house near campus, authorities said.

“She did not have any recall of what had happened,” prosecutor Scott Teter said. “Other students who had seen the tape told her, ‘Did you know there is a tape of you being circulated?”’

Teter said the eight-minute tape seized from one of the men clearly identifies the attackers and shows the sex acts were not consensual - the woman was drunk and “physically helpless.”

“There’s no part of that tape that is not graphic. It’s awful,” Teter said Thursday after a hearing in the case was postponed until Dec. 20.

The athletes, all freshmen, were expelled from the two-year junior college after their Nov. 7 arraignment. Authorities said the five are not cooperating with the search for a sixth man on the tape who is believed to be a friend of the athletes.

The woman didn’t talk to police until Nov. 4, three days after the attack, when prosecutors say she began suffering complications from her injuries.