Daisy Coleman, aged 23 years, a rape survivor and one of the stars of the Netflix documentary Audrie and Daisy, died by her own hand on Tuesday, August 4, 2020. This is a death that should never have happened.
Catherine Daisy Coleman was 14 years old when she went to a party in early 2012. If I recall the circumstances correctly, she may have snuck out of her house, which is not an unknown thing for a 14 year old girl to do. Many of us have done the same thing. Her mother had moved Daisy and her two brothers from Albany, MO, to Maryville, MO, to escape the trauma resulting from the death in a motor vehicle accident of her husband, the children’s father, the previous year. Daisy was probably still feeling the pain of her father’s loss and trying to adjust to a new town and a new school and wanting very much to fit in. Who can blame her? So she went to a party.
At this party, she was plied with alcohol and then raped by one Matthew Barnett, who was 18 years old, a football player, and the grandson of a powerful former Missouri state representative. Her 13 year old friend Paige was likewise sexually assaulted by another 15 year old boy, while a third boy recorded the assaults on his cell phone. After they were done with her, Barnett (possibly with help from the other boys) dumped Daisy on her front lawn in 22 degree weather in her jeans and t-shirt, where her mother found her several hours later.
Barnett was arrested on charges of felony sexual assault, which were later reduced to misdemeanor charges of “endangerment of a minor”. His parents insisted the sex was consensual. (His parents? Really?) Well, to be fair, he did too. Barnett was not taken to trial after a local prosecutor called the actions a case of “incorrigible teenagers” and said there was not enough evidence to pursue a trial. “We did our job,” Maryville Sheriff Darren White is quoted as saying “We did it well. It’s unfortunate that they are unhappy. I guess they’re just going to have to get over it.” A campaign of harassment, both at school and online, began against Daisy and her brother Charlie and eventually extended to the rest of the family. Before long, internet outrage was fired up and Anonymous got into the case, as well as some national publications. New Republic described Maryville, MO, as a “lawless hellhole”, and Central Missouri University, where Barnett was by then a student, found itself in for major flaming as to the “kind of students it admits”.
In 2014, a special prosecutor was put in charge to reinvestigate the case. Barnett pleaded guilty to misdemeanor second-degree endangerment of the welfare of a child for leaving her outside her house, and was sentenced by Missouri Circuit Court Judge Glen Dietrich to four months in jail that were suspended in favor of two years of probation. He also had to pay Daisy a sum of $1,800 restitution. The campaign of harassment against the family continued, and Melinda Coleman moved her family back to Albany, MO, which she had left three years prior. Mysteriously, their vacant house, which was listed for sale, burned down.
In 2016, Daisy and another young sexual assault survivor, Audrie Pott, were subjects of the Netflix documentary, Audrie and Daisy. Sadly, Audrie committed suicide at 15 after nude photos of her taken during the assault went viral. Daisy continued to soldier on, founding a non-profit foundation for survivors of sexual assault, SafeBAE (Before Anyone Else), attending Missouri Valley College, and going on to become a tattoo artist and an aspiring musician in Colorado, where she and her mother had relocated. She continued speaking out on behalf of sexual assault survivors and had been receiving treatment with EMDR and CBD, which have been used successfully with victims of PTSD in recent times. She spoke in glowing terms about both treatments. However, there was apparently a darker side; Daisy was rumored to have a stalker who made her life miserable. This has happened to other women, but it can be particularly traumatic for sexual assault survivors. On Tuesday, August 4, her mother requested a welfare check, and police found Daisy dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Why do I care? Because I have a daughter and granddaughters who this could have happened to. Because I was once a teenaged girl who did dumb stuff, and it could have happened to me. Because it happens to other teenaged girls who are prone to doing dumb stuff just because they’re kids….and it never should. And because the boys and young men who do things to them get away with it way too often.
Oh yes, what of Matthew Barnett? I wasn’t able to find much on him, not even a picture. He’s apparently tried to fly pretty much under the radar since then. He has no social media presence, he has given no interviews since his preliminary arrest, and he’s said nothing publicly since Daisy’s suicide. He will probably go on to live his life the way such privileged young men do, convinced he’s gotten away with something. He shouldn’t, of course, but that’s the way it is. And should not be.
