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As the party at a friend's house wound down, Kay and her husband helped clean up, then her husband went to sleep on the couch. She went inside the house and sat down. An acquaintance of her friend followed her in, sat down with her and they talked briefly.
Kay said she was calling it a night, got up and went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed fully clothed.
The acquaintance came in. She told him to go away. He lay down on the bed, she said no again and tried to get away.
"The next thing I knew, he was on top of me," she said.
He raped her while she was struggling and crying and trying to get away from him.
As soon as he was done, he left the room. She put herself together and ran out to find her husband. By the time she woke her husband, the rapist was gone.
They called the police, who came to the house and took her to the hospital for an exam.
After two months, the acquaintance was arrested, but he was out on bail within three days. Three months later he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Kay said she cloistered herself after the rape - went only to work, came right home and didn't leave, unless it was with her husband or friends.
"I went to work because I didn't want to sit at home and think about it," she said.
The whole experience was - and still is - unbelievably difficult to deal with, Kay said, but the months between the rapist's arrest and his sentencing were especially hard on Kay and her husband. If they went anywhere, they constantly wondered if they were going to run into the rapist or his girlfriend.
Kay said she also began to drink a lot right after the incident. Her family, friends and especially her husband, however, were supportive and understanding, and she sought counseling at the Bowen Center.
She also became more involved in her church, which helped her recovery.
Now, almost a year later, Kay is recovering, though not fully over it, if she ever will be. She still has flashbacks, she said, but at least she's able to talk about it now.
Kay is not the only rape victim in Kosciusko County. There was the 14-year-old middle school student who went to a party in a small town near Warsaw and someone slipped a date-rape drug into her drink. She was gang-raped while she went in and out of consciousness.
And there was the 16-year-old girl who was at a friend's house and was raped at knifepoint.
Or the man who was hitchhiking on U.S. 30 and was raped by two truck drivers.
Rape, according to legal definitions, is sexual intercourse that is forced on someone or is done to someone who is not aware it is happening or is so mentally deficient they could not give consent.
Though it is classified under "Sex Crimes" in the Indiana statutes, rape is considered a crime of violence, not of desire or passion.
While claims of rape by celebrities command much public attention, in reality, it is estimated by the FBI that nine out of 10 rapes go unreported.
Kosciusko County Prosecutor Steve Hearn said he thinks the reluctance to report rape is changing.
"There seems to be more of a willingness of the victim to come forward," he said.
Most rapes involve people who are at least acquainted, he said.
"We see stranger rape very seldom. Normally the rape is by someone they know."
Plea bargaining is frequent in rape cases, he said, as it was in Kay's.
"The Legislature has made the penalty so severe that you usually can offer the perpetrator something to plead to," he said. "And usually the victim is satisfied because she doesn't have to face the rapist" or go into the details in public.
Kay emphasized that victims should not try to act as though the rape never happened.
"They should report it," she said. "They should know that it's not their fault, because it's not at all. ... There was no reason why it should have happened, but it did."
