The woman who has accused NFL rising star Matt Araiza of rape said she “can’t stop thinking about” what she says happened to her at an off-campus San Diego State University Halloween party last year when she was 17.
“It’s been hard,” the woman told ABC News’ “Nightline.”
“There’s no easy part of it and there’s no days where it gets better,” said the woman, who is remaining anonymous and alleges in a lawsuit that Araiza and two other then-San Diego State University football players gang raped her.
The lawsuit alleges that Araiza, who was 21 at the time, gave the 17-year-old girl an alcoholic beverage, asked for oral sex and had sex with her in a side yard before he took her to a bedroom, where he and two other men are alleged to have gang-raped her.
“It was not consensual. I was 17. I did what he told me to do in that moment without argument,” the woman said of the solo encounter with Araiza. “I never told him that I was of age and he never asked.”
The woman said she was intoxicated and remembers “certain blocks of the night very vividly, and some parts of it I don’t remember.”
“I was screaming and crying I don’t know that I verbally said the words ‘no’ though. I feel it should have been clear,” said the woman, who said she was bleeding during the attack. “I feel like it should be clear to anybody that that’s not consensual sex.”
She reported the assault to authorities the next day and underwent a rape examination, the suit says. She couldn’t remember who raped her, but through witness statements and phone calls to those involved, she and detectives were able to identify Araiza and the other two men, the woman said on “Nightline.”
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Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the Buffalo Bills released Araiza, who was drafted in the sixth round and went to Buffalo as college football’s best punter last year.
Araiza’s accuser said that when she found out he had been drafted, she threw up for hours.
“Just to see him continuing on and thriving while I felt like my life was completely torn apart,” she said.
Araiza denies the accusations of rape and other parts of the lawsuit.
“The facts of the incident are not what they are portrayed in the lawsuit or in the press,” he said in a statement shared on Twitter by the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. “I look forward to quickly setting the record straight.”
Last month, San Diego police sent the results of their investigation, without making any arrests, to the local district attorney’s office, which said the matter was still under review.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
