Once silent, now strong voice

It should have been a wonderful sports story. Katie Hnida should have been forever known as the woman who made NCAA history when she kicked an extra point for New Mexico Aug. 30, 2003, becoming the first female to record a point in a Division 1-A football game.

But you know Katie Hnida for a far more hideous reason. You remember her as the former Colorado University kicker who alleged that one of her teammates raped her while she was a football player in Boulder.

Hnida made those explosive charges amid a major scandal at Colorado that involved investigations of "alcohol-fueled sex parties" for football recruits and claims by three women that they were raped. Speaking with Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly in February 2004, Hnida said she had been sexually harassed throughout her time at Colorado. Teammates, she said, groped her breasts on the field, placed their hands on her crotch, threw footballs at her head, and called her unspeakable names. The low point came when she went over to a teammate's house to watch a game and, she claimed, was raped in his apartment.

The response of the university was both sickening and appalling. Asked for a comment regarding Hnida's accusations, coach Gary Barnett, who inherited Hnida after the man that recruited her, Rick Neuheisel, left the school, chose that time to dismiss Hnida as a "terrible" player. It went downhill from there. The football staff and the athletic director, Dick Tharp, while publicly stating they were looking "seriously" into her charges, instead seriously looked into ways to discredit Hnida and her story. Colorado president Betsy Hoffman suspended Barnett, but refused to fire him. Then, when asked in sworn testimony about football players calling Hnida a slur that is easily the most vile term imaginable to call a woman, Hoffman said the players used the word "as a term of endearment."

Hoffman later resigned, as much for botching the furor over one of her professors likening the World Trade Center victims to Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, as the debacle surrounding her football program. Tharp, too, eventually quit. Barnett kept his job, and none of his players were indicted or held accountable for their alleged actions.

Hnida, meanwhile, discovered what it's like in our country to be an alleged rape victim. She was subjected to death threats, was ridiculed on bandit websites, and was deemed a "traitor" for blemishing Colorado football, as if it wasn't already stained beyond repair. She was branded a slut, a liar, a publicity-seeking tramp.

She had already left Colorado in 2000, and spent the next two years battling serious bouts of depression.

"There were some days I couldn't imagine why I should even get out of bed, so I didn't," she confessed.

Over time, she shared the details of her alleged assault with her brother Joe, and -- nearly two years after it occurred -- finally her parents. She went into therapy and was treated with anti-depression medication.

In 2002, thanks to the support of her family, she walked on to the New Mexico football team and held her breath.

"I had some initial flashbacks to all the horrible stuff at Colorado," she said, "but almost immediately at New Mexico I was treated like a real person. I love those guys. They have been the best teammates I could have ever asked for."

The highlight was that latesummer afternoon -- Aug. 30, 2003 -- against Texas State, when New Mexico coach Rocky Long tapped her on the shoulder pads and told her to do what she had always dreamed about -- kick a football through the uprights.

The healing process is far from over for Katie Hnida. She is taking baby steps toward recovery, and yesterday she spoke to students at Mount Ida College in Newton about her ordeal. It was one of the first public appearances she's made since her allegations in Sports Illustrated last year, but it won't be the last.

"I need to talk about it," she explained, in a private interview before her speech. "There are too many women who are out there suffering in silence. Unfortunately, the subject of rape and sexual assault is still taboo. And it's really a shame how our legal system always ends up attacking the victim.

"I have been a rape victim, but now I like to think of myself as a rape survivor. Believe me, there's a big difference."

When the alleged rape occurred, Hnida said she kept silent out of fear, shame, and humiliation. She was also afraid that if she went to Barnett, he would use it as a reason to remove her from the team since, "He didn't want me there in the first place."

Asked if she would come forward sooner if she could do it again, Hnida hesitated.

"I'm not sure, to be honest," she said. "I think about it on a daily basis. If I had come forward, I don't know if I would have ever been able to play football again. I don't know if anyone would have taken a chance on a woman who accused a teammate of rape.

"As sad and as sick as it may sound, I wanted to play football so badly, I didn't want that taken away from me."

Though it's been widely reported that Hnida never reported her alleged rape to the authorities, she revealed for the first time yesterday that she did speak with the district attorney and local police before she went public with her story.

"I did contact them," she said, "But at that time I just didn't feel I could go forward with [pressing charges]. I was still really struggling, and I was with a new team [New Mexico], and I didn't want to put them in the middle of it."

Although going public with her experiences has been disheartening, at times, it also has proved to be inspiring.

"I got an e-mail from a girl in Albuquerque who had been raped and was pursuing the case," Hnida said. "She was just about to drop it when I came forward. She told me, `If you can come out and say it, then so can I.' Those are the kind of things that make you realize we can't keep sweeping this under the rug."

Hnida still has not ruled out pressing charges against her former teammate. She stresses that many of her Colorado teammates were respectful and supportive, and it was only "a few" that made her life miserable.

She has not been back to the Boulder campus, nor has she had any contact with Barnett.

"I don't harbor any bad feelings toward him," she said. "I'm not trying to get him fired or anything. I believe we hold our own destiny in our hands. He has determined his own destiny."

Hnida could try to forget her ordeal and move on with her life, but she has decided she must confront her experience to allow herself to heal, while helping others who have lived through similar horrors.

"It hasn't been easy having the most traumatic moment of your life plastered all over the news," she said. "And it isn't easy to have this horrible experience minimized by people saying you're lying.

"The most unbelievable one was when someone said, `She's doing it for the media attention.' Are you kidding? Do you think I wanted this kind of attention? Do you think anyone would?"

Hnida graduated from New Mexico with a 3.5 cumulative average and a degree in psychology. She is mulling over writing a book and said yesterday she has received a phone call from a team in the Canadian Football League looking for a kicker.

"I still deal with the effects of my rape on a daily basis," she said. "Before this, I always thought getting raped meant some stranger coming out of the woods and tackling you. Now I know most rapes are `acquaintance rapes.' The most important thing is for women who have gone through this not to feel like they are alone."

There was a time when Katie Hnida was alone. That was before she made history -- not just as a kicker, but as a woman who found the courage to stand up and fight a battle that has been waged in silence for far too long.

Jackie MacMullan is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail address is macmullan@globe.com.