Brenda Tracy regained consciousness on a hardwood floor, lying on her stomach. She was naked, covered in bruises, with chip crumbs on her body, gum tangled in her hair and a condom stuck to one leg.
As she tried to pull herself upright, only fragmented and terrifying memories from the night before began to return.
It was June 1998. Tracy, then 24 and the mother of two, lived in Oregon. The night before, she had gone with her closest friend to an apartment in Corvallis. The apartment belonged to the friend’s boyfriend, an Oregon State University football player, who shared it with a teammate.
The group had been drinking, smoking marijuana and playing video games with three other friends. Tracy had come along for company, but when her friend went into a bedroom with her boyfriend, Tracy was left in the living area with four of the men.
One of the final moments she could remember clearly was reluctantly taking a drink mixed by two of the men. After only a few sips, she began to feel flushed and lightheaded. Believing she might lose consciousness, she soon blacked out.
Tracy later alleged that the four men sexually assaulted her repeatedly over the next seven hours.
She recalled being unable to move as they allegedly shifted her powerless body from one position to another. She remembered saying no while the men encouraged each other, and vomiting as the alleged assault continued.
Almost 30 years later, reports of another alleged hours-long sexual assault involving multiple men, this time at Cornell University, would force Tracy to confront the trauma of that night all over again.
But in the Oregon apartment in 1998, her memory once again disappeared into darkness.
Brenda Tracy accused four men of raping her in 1998, including two who were emerging stars on the Oregon State University football team
A civil lawsuit filed in New York last month accused seven Chi Phi fraternity members of gang rape, triggering a national debate and placing Cornell University under intense scrutiny; four of the men have publicly denied the allegations
The following morning, Tracy located her clothing and dressed without saying much. She went to a nearby bedroom, woke her friend and told her they needed to leave.
Tracy said she understood almost immediately that she had been sexually assaulted. Yet as she left the apartment, she did not initially direct her anger toward the men she accused. Instead, she blamed herself.
“The moment I heard the door shut behind me, I started blaming myself,” Tracy told Our News Outlet. “I thought it was because I had been drinking and that I was responsible.”
“I kept asking myself what I had done to make these men want to treat me that way.”
The journey home was mostly quiet, interrupted by Tracy’s crying.
During the drive, her friend touched her leg and tried to reassure her. “Brenda, everything will be okay. We just got in over our heads,” she said.
The reassurance did little to ease Tracy’s distress. Once home, she curled up in a fetal position while her mother stroked her hair. Still convinced she had caused the assault by drinking, Tracy repeatedly apologized.
Her mother took her first to a women’s crisis center and then to a hospital, where Tracy underwent a sexual assault examination. By then, she was consumed by shame and hopelessness.
She had already decided that after the examination, she would end her life.
‘I had a lot of shame about a lot of things in that moment, and I thought about my sons and how ashamed they would be someday when they found out what happened to me, and the shame was just so overwhelming that I decided that I did not want to be here anymore,’ she said.
‘So I made the decision to die, and I felt really good about that in the moment in the car.’
Tracy was a 24-year-old single mother of two at the time of the alleged assault. She said it took her years to reconcile with the ordeal
It was the kindness a nurse extended to her at the crisis center that pulled her back from the brink.
With the nurse’s encouragement, Tracy reluctantly reported the alleged attack to police, setting off an investigation that led to the arrests of all four men.
Our News Outlet has obtained a copy of the original 1998 police report, which details the allegations and the investigation that followed.
In interviews documented in the report, all four men acknowledged that Tracy had said ‘no’ or asked to be left alone at some point during the encounter.
The men largely minimized their own involvement while implicating one another. One described the encounter as ‘risky,’ while another, asked whether Tracy’s account was true, replied: ‘Kind of.’
But as word spread through the wider community, Tracy said she found herself increasingly isolated and scrutinized.
Her best friend turned against her. Her boyfriend, himself a former Oregon State football player, distanced himself. Tracy says she also began receiving death threats at home, warning her to drop the case.
‘I was Jane Doe, but a lot of people knew it was me,’ she recalled.
‘Suddenly I became the perpetrator all of a sudden, painted as though I was trying to ruin somebody’s life instead of the victim of a horrible crime.’
When interviewed by police, none of the men accused by Tracy denied her account, records show. However, she opted not to press charges – which she claims led her to being vilified
After prosecutors warned that she could face four separate trials, each exposing intimate details of her assault, Tracy decided she could not endure a prosecution.
The district attorney’s office declined to file criminal charges, stressing at the time that Tracy had not recanted or changed her account.
But that crucial distinction was lost amid the ensuing backlash.
‘If there was really a rape, they would prosecute. She must be lying, right?’ Tracy recalled people suggesting. ‘I was called the liar again.’
Tracy, though she wasn’t a student, also reported the allegations to Oregon State, hoping the university would take appropriate action. Instead, the two football players were suspended for just one game.
ALSO READ: Mother Accused of Stabbing Husband, 3-Year-Old Son to Death at Resort
Adding to her anguish, the team’s coach, Mike Riley, publicly described the players as ‘good guys’ who had made ‘a bad choice.’
‘That stayed with me,’ Tracy said. ‘That, along with the one-game suspension, made me feel like nothing. Like what they did to me was as minor as getting a traffic ticket.
‘I did not understand why all the blame was coming on me and not them.’
For the next 16 years, Tracy kept her experience largely hidden.
She raised her two sons as a single mother, became a nurse and built a successful career. But beneath the surface, she says she struggled with depression, post-traumatic stress, nightmares, an eating disorder and recurring suicidal thoughts.
By 2014, Tracy had reached a breaking point. She began therapy because, as she recalled, she wanted to ‘not want to die every day.’
After a lengthy investigation two of Tracy’s alleged attackers, who were also college football players, got a one game suspension. She said the lack of action made her feel worthless
Around the same time, she contacted Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano after reading about Riley’s handling of another player’s misconduct.
Canzano encouraged her to tell her story publicly. She agreed, and in November 2014, her account appeared on the front page of The Oregonian, with her name and photograph.
Tracy went on to become a prominent advocate for survivors of sexual violence, working with college football teams and the NFL and campaigning for changes to sexual assault laws in Oregon.
She later reconciled with Riley, who apologized for his remarks publicly and invited her to speak to his football team at the University of Nebraska.
Nearly three decades after her own ordeal, however, the allegations emerging from Cornell University have brought back painful memories.
A young woman, identified only as Jane Doe, alleged in a civil lawsuit filed in September that she was drugged and repeatedly sexually assaulted by fraternity brothers during an hours-long ordeal at the Chi Phi house in October 2024.
Cornell conducted a disciplinary investigation, expelling two students and sanctioning several others. Four of the accused have publicly denied wrongdoing, and all denied the allegations during the university’s investigation, records show.
Local prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges, a decision that has since come under renewed scrutiny and prompted the appointment of a special prosecutor to conduct a fresh criminal investigation.
For Tracy, perceived similarities between her story and Jane Doe’s are disturbing – not only in the alleged sexual violence, but in the scrutiny she has faced since coming forward.
OSU’s then-coach, Mike Riley, later apologized to Tracy and invited her to speak to his team at the University Nebraska
Cornell’s campus has been flooded with protests over the last few weeks, with students demanding change and accountability from school officials
Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, says his client has been subjected to a torrent of abuse since filing her lawsuit in September, including death threats, attempts to expose her identity and a swatting incident that sent armed police to her family’s home.
Meanwhile, text messages Doe sent in the days after the alleged assault have become a focus of attention, raising questions about her allegations, which the accused men dispute.
In one exchange, she told one of the accused men that she had enjoyed being with him and another fraternity brother and that none of the sexual activity had been illegal.
But Giuffra says the message reflected a young woman struggling to make sense of a night she could only partially remember, while rumors about what had happened spread like wildfire around her.
As she spoke with friends and pieced together more of the night, her understanding of what had happened began to change, he said.
It’s a response Tracy recognizes from her own experience – and one that speaks to an uncomfortable reality for women who report sexual assault: their own behavior can come under as much scrutiny as the conduct they allege.
‘We blame ourselves, and then society blames us, and we internalize that,’ Tracy told Our News Outlet. ‘And all that does is take the focus off the perpetrator and their behavior and what they did.
‘I kind of go between being angry that it’s still happening, but then also just feeling this deep sadness and heartbreak for [Doe].’
But her greatest concern is what the young woman may face in the years ahead.
‘I know what’s in store for her. Not only is she going to have to deal with the aftermath of the attack itself, but then the betrayal of the systems that are supposed to support you and help you and don’t.’
That sense of betrayal is particularly familiar to Tracy, who says the response to her allegations left her questioning her own worth for years.
Tracy said she recognizes a series of parallels between her and Jane Doe’s story – similarities that trouble her
She believes universities remain too concerned with protecting their reputations, even when students report serious allegations of sexual violence.
In Tracy’s view, preventing similar cases requires more than investigations and disciplinary hearings. Universities must educate young men about consent, challenge cultures that enable misconduct and ensure people who report assaults can do so without fear of retaliation.
But for Doe, whose legal battle is still unfolding, Tracy’s message is more personal.
If the young woman were sitting across from her now, Tracy said she would tell her that she loves her, that she should not blame herself for what she alleges happened, and that she can survive the difficult years ahead.
‘It’s going to be a long road, and it’s going to be hard. But she absolutely can do it,’ Tracy said.
‘She’s very strong. She’s very courageous, and I know she may not feel like it, but she needs to know that she is.’
Above all, Tracy wants Doe to understand something she herself struggled to believe for years.
‘I just want her to know at least that she’s not alone – there’s an army of people behind her.’
