Daisy Coleman survives assault, backlash, becomes victim advocate

Only 14, she has no idea she's been sexually assaulted, claiming a friend abandoned her in sub-freezing temperatures. And she says the nightmare all started with a seemingly innocent text:

"u wanna come drink wit me and chill?"

That dark place became even darker, turning Daisy Coleman from victim into villain.

Her claims against the football player she accused divided a town and changed Daisy forever.

When our Elizabeth Smart heard about Daisy's horrifying ordeal, she knew she had to meet her. Elizabeth was also only 14 when she went through a life-changing ordeal: kidnapped, raped and held captive. And today Elizabeth shares a chilling memory from that horrible time in her life.

"The first time I was raped I remember feeling -- I just remember feeling devastated," said Smart. "I felt like it would be better to be dead than to continue living being a rape victim, being a rape survivor. I mean, I felt in that moment if there had been an easy way out I probably would have taken it. Do you remember at all?"

"I just felt like I wanted to run away and go to a different place where no one knew me so I could restart again," said Daisy Coleman.

Ironically, Maryville, Missouri is where Daisy's family moved to escape a personal tragedy.

"I lost my dad when I was nine years old, so my family has always been kind of not immune to hardship, so we definitely experienced a lot of grief with losing my dad, but we also kind of found this new, almost utopian society in Maryville," said Daisy.

Maryville is a typical Middle American town about a hundred miles north of Kansas City, the kind of place where connections are everything, and football is king.

Daisy blossomed in her new high school when she joined the cheerleading squad.

"Making the cheer squad was really cool because a lot of the girls that I was cheering with, I had been dancing with at a studio already, so I felt like it was already kind of like a little family there and I wanted to be a part of it," said Daisy.

Cheerleaders know all the top players, and there was no one more popular than Matt Barnett. He was a senior, and a friend to Daisy's brother Charlie, who was a three-letter athlete himself.

"Matt hung out with us quite a bit," said Charlie Coleman. "I would have considered him a friend at the time."

One bitter cold night Daisy planned to stay inside with a girlfriend.

"I was just having my friend over, we were trying to kind of have a girls night," said Daisy. "We actually decided to steal some of my mom's liquor and drink some of that just to kind of experiment with it since I was just getting into high school and it seems like that's what everyone was doing at the time."

But her plans changed when Matt texted her to come over.

She replied: "Sweet. Do you want me to bring alcohol?"

Did she know him very well?

"My perpetrator was actually one of my brother's best friends, so I assumed he was like someone I could trust and who I looked at as almost a brother figure since he was around my brother so often," said Daisy.

Did you hear how Daisy calls Matt "her perpetrator?" That's something that struck a nerve for Elizabeth.

"In my own case, in my own story, names were such a form of power," said Smart. "For a long time I did just refer to them as my captors or my perpetrators because it almost felt like giving them a name made them human beings.

"Do you purposely not call your perpetrator by name?" Smart asked.

"I think subconsciously I do just call my perpetrator 'my perpetrator' because before I knew him as my perpetrator I just knew him as Matt," said Daisy.

Daisy says she and her 13-year-old girlfriend went to Matt's house.

"One of the first red flags that were kind of thrown, he didn't park at his house, he parked around the block and we had to walk through a couple yards to get to his basement window, and from there he snuck us in the basement window," said Daisy. "By the time we had gotten to his place I was already fairly inebriated."

That is the moment Daisy says when her utopian paradise turned into hell. In the basement Daisy says Matt and several other boys encouraged her to drink even more.

"I remember after taking chugs from the bottle, they had a cup that they had me drink out of, it was like a tall shot glass, and if you drank so much of it, it like measured how much of a bitch you were," said Daisy. "Apparently, if you drink enough you're not a bitch, but I drank that whole glass and then continued taking just chugs straight from the bottle, and the last thing I remember is a dog came and hopped up on my lap. And that's like literally the last thing I remembered before I blacked out.

"After that the next thing I remember is waking up, being drug into my house," said Daisy.

After leaving Matt's house, Daisy spent some three hours in her yard, barefoot, wearing only yoga pants and a shirt. The temperature dipped to a bone-chilling 20 degrees.

"It was a Sunday morning, it was really early and it was cold out. I remember my mom yelling for my name," said Charlie Coleman. "And she had found Daisy out in the yard and had brought her in. I saw there was a boot there and her purse and a phone, and I picked up her phone and the first name I saw on there was 'Matty B' and instantly I pretty much knew what had gone down."

Daisy says her mom put her in the bathtub to warm her up.

"As soon as she put me in the bath and saw all my frostbite, that was an immediate reason to take me to the hospital, let alone the fact that there was bruising on my inner thigh and near my groin area, and she decided that we should go to the hospital and see what my alcohol level was and do a rape kit," Daisy said. "Whenever they started doing the rape kit, that's when I started thinking that maybe something had gone wrong the night before besides just drinking."

Now Daisy finds herself in the emergency room, frostbitten and nursing the mother of all hangovers.

"Her blood-alcohol was still through the roof," said Daisy's brother Charlie. "It became very real at that point."

Daisy's blood-alcohol content was at 0.13 percent. The emergency room doctor performed a rape kit. Daisy's mom Melinda says the doctor told her Daisy had tears in her genital area.

"So he described the trauma to me, and the tears, and I said 'OK, I know what that means but I'm gonna need for you to say it to me 'cause I'm so stressed out,'" Melinda Coleman tells Crime Watch Daily.

Was Daisy sexually assaulted by the popular football player?

"Honestly, he wasn't that great of a football player, but he was a popular senior boy who a lot of people kind of looked up to," said Daisy Coleman. "People didn't want to believe that someone that they glorified is capable of you know, human action and doing something so terrible."

Hours later the sheriff brings Barnett in for questioning. The detective seems rather laid back during the recorded interrogation.

Detective: "Did she drink some at your house?"

Barnett: "She had a little, yeah."

Detective: "Alcohol."

Barnett: "Yeah."

Detective: "In your basement.**

Barnett: "Just a little bit, yeah."

Detective: "OK, and that's cool."

Then the football player throws a bombshell: He admits that he and Daisy had sex -- but he claims it was consensual.

Detective: "Then you took her home, you and her talked, you had sex."

Barnett: "Yeah."

Detective: "Then she came out after having sex and wanted to have another shot."

Barnett: "Yeah."

Barnett goes into chilling detail, explaining why he and his friends abandoned daisy in 20-degree weather.

Barnett: "We brought her over and set her outside of her house with her friend. In case they don't want to get caught. And they said they had snuck out. She sobered up a little bit. So they were going to sit out there for a while. And I went back home."

It was then revealed that one of the boys in the basement videotaped Daisy's assault.

"It was taken from behind the door by one of the guys that I would have considered one of my best friends," said Daisy's brother Charlie.

But that video was reportedly deleted -- any alleged proof, gone.

The sheriff charged the then-17-year-old with felony sexual assault and misdemeanor child endangerment.

"It took all of me not to sit there and text him or show up at his house and try to beat the crap out of him," said Charlie.

Justice would need to handle the revenge. But not before Daisy faced yet another crushing assault. People in Maryville began taking sides, and Daisy says her friends turned on her.

"I felt like my life had immediately taken a 180, because I no longer wanted to go to school at Maryville," said Daisy. "I felt like I lost my whole group of friends, and I just felt like I wanted to run away and go to a different place where no one knew me so I could restart again."

Melinda Coleman says some of the boys at school then made threats on social media to beat up her sons. And she claims when she went to the sheriff's department for help, they threatened her.

"I called the sheriff to get someone, and I showed him the stuff on Twitter and Facebook where they had planned it," said Melinda. "There was a captain at the sheriff's office that came over to the house the next day and threatened me, and he told me to stay off social media."

Crime Watch Daily reached out to the current sheriff of Nodaway County, Randy Strong. In a statement he says: "The individuals involved in the Coleman investigation resigned prior to my first day in office."

During the investigation the prosecutor questioned Daisy in a criminal deposition. You'll be shocked when you hear what she says happened.

"My prosecutor came out into the hallway and he just looked at me and said 'Daisy,' and didn't even treat me like a human being, and then once I got into the room he actually read me my Miranda rights," said Daisy. "And I felt like I was being treated like the perpetrator, like I wasn't the survivor."

The same thing happened to Elizabeth Smart too after her chilling nine-month ordeal. Cops questioned her, asking why she didn't escape when she had the chance.

"I remember for me that was so frustrating, and then to hear about what you're going through, not even being treated like a person, being treated like you're the perpetrator -- it must have been so infuriating," said Smart.

"It was really frustrating," said Daisy. "I remember breaking down and crying at least three times during the deposition."

In the deposition obtained by Crime Watch Daily Kansas City affiliate WDAF-TV, Daisy admitted "it's possible" that she could have promised Barnett sexual favors if he gave her alcohol. That was enough for the prosecutor to drop the sexual assault charge against Matt Barnett.

Interestingly, the boy who had admitted he had sex with Daisy's girlfriend that night was convicted in juvenile court. But would there ever be justice for Daisy?

Shock and dismay for teenager Daisy Coleman after the prosecutor drops a felony charge against Matt Barnett, a young man accused of sexually assaulting her.

Daisy's brother wondered: Did Barnett use some pull to wriggle out of a felony?

"Matt was definitely politically connected. His dad had served as a sheriff," said Charlie Coleman. "And his grandpa was a pretty powerful name in the area."

Matt Barnett's grandfather Rex Barnett is a former state legislator. But no evidence has surfaced that there was any wrongdoing by the family.

The prosecutor's decision outraged the vigilante group known as "Anonymous": "We demand an immediate investigation into the handling by local authorities of Daisy's case."

And in the town square, more than 400 people waved daisies, demanding justice.

But two young women came out against Daisy Coleman.

"I feel like there hasn't been enough blame on the victim," said one.

"I feel there is actually real rape victims that need more attention than this situation," another said.

The pressure from the masked individuals of Anonymous worked.

Nodaway County, Missouri Prosecutor Bob Rice made a stunning announcement: "I have asked the court to appoint a special prosecuting attorney to conduct an independent review of the facts and determine whether to re-file charges."

Three months later, an even bigger shock: No felony charges. The special prosecutor said there was insufficient evidence to charge Matt Barnett with felony sexual assault. Barnett cut a plea deal: Guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment.

Barnett's attorney spoke on his behalf.

"Mr. Barnett truly regrets the actions to which he has pled guilty," said J.R. Hobbs, Barnett's defense attorney.

Barnett was sentenced to four months in jail, suspended upon completion of two years' probation. And he was ordered to pay Daisy's medical bills and apologize.

"And he was also supposed to write me an apology letter. I never got that letter, or that check," Daisy tells Crime Watch Daily.

Now Daisy Coleman has turned her anguish into action. She and two other sexual assault victims, along with her brother Charlie, started a support group called SafeBAE -- BAE stands for "Before Anyone Else."

"We noticed that high schools didn't really want to talk about subjects like this at all," said Daisy. "And we decided that we wanted to change that."

Daisy's remarkable story even made it to the small screen in a Netflix original documentary called "Audrie & Daisy."

Audrie was a 15-year-old who killed herself eight days after pictures of her sexual assault were posted online.

"I felt like if no one else is going to tell her story for her, then someone needs to do it, and I decided to step up to the plate and be that person for Audrie," said Daisy.

Daisy understands all too well. She says she tried to kill herself three times.

"In a way, I didn't know what else to do but keep her alive day to day, and the boys would even help me," said Melinda Coleman, Daisy's mother. "Sometimes they would sleep in sleeping bags around her bed so that we could watch."

Daisy now finds strength in her multiple tattoos. And unbelievably, she forgives the man who left her to freeze in the middle of that dark night.

What is her message to other survivors?

"I would have to tell them that they're not alone," said Daisy Coleman. "And that whatever they're going through is not their fault and they shouldn't blame themselves."

For more on the group, visit SafeBAE

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or call the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).