The case of Beckett Brennan

Watch the Segment »

Editor's Note:
Comments on this story have been disabled due to offensive messages being posted in the feedback forum.

With all that is going on in the world, there hasn't been much attention paid to a social issue the Obama administration has decided to take on: sexual assault on college campuses. It is a problem according the Justice Department that has proliferated across this country.

And earlier this month, the government sent out guidelines to help colleges deal with it.

But it won't be easy. Adjudicating a case of sexual assault on a college campus can be difficult for both the victim and the school, which we found out in the case of Beckett Brennan, who was a student at the University of the Pacific when she reported that she had been raped.

Brennan was a high school all-American basketball player, renowned for her three-point shooting, and recruited by dozens of top colleges. Her father, Barry, had played in the NCAA finals in 1974, and passed his love of the game on to his daughter.

"We built an unbelievable relationship through basketball and on the court," Brennan told Katie Couric.

"Tell me a little bit about what made you fall in love with basketball," Couric asked.

"I enjoyed kind of having it define my ability, and it was nice to kind of be recognized by something that you worked so hard for," she replied.

She accepted a full scholarship at the University of the Pacific, a picturesque school in Stockton, Calif. with 3,000 undergraduates and a successful Division I men's basketball program and a growing women's program.

"And so you had a good year, your freshman year, right?" Couric asked.

"Yes. Great year," Brennan said. "Actually played and made an impact, I'd like to think."

But everything changed for Brennan one Saturday night in May 2008. She went to a party with her teammates at a student housing complex known as the "Townhouses," where she says she drank six shots of vodka. She says later, she found herself stranded at an off-campus party looking for a ride.

"I was offered a ride by two of the men on the men's basketball team. And assuming that we were going back to the Townhouses," Brennan told Couric.

Asked if she felt completely comfortable taking a ride with them, Brennan said, "Yeah. Absolutely. There were no red flags that came up. No reason not to trust them."

When they got back to the Townhouses, she went into one of the basketball player's apartments thinking the party was continuing there. Instead, she claims they led her upstairs into an empty bedroom and raped her. Then, she says, a third basketball player came into the room, pushed her into a closet, and raped her again.

"I remember them saying 'Don't tell anybody, and this is our little secret,'" Brennan told Couric.

"What were you saying to them?" Couric asked.

"Why are you doing this to me? Over and over and over again," she replied.

When it was over, she called friends for help. Back at her dorm, and without her knowledge, one of them recorded her on his cell phone. "And they were like taking off my clothes. I was inside the closet in the corner, trying to like, trying to get away. I don't want anyone to find out. No, I don't. I don't want anybody to find out," she could be heard saying on the recording.

According to a study funded by the Justice Department, 95 percent of victims of sexual assault on college campuses don't report it. And neither did Brennan: not to Stockton Police and not to the university.

The next day, she got through her last final exam and flew home to Colorado. But her friends were worried and upset, and gave that recording to the school. Her assistant coach called her at home.

Produced by Graham Messick and Ashley Velie