A family was forced to flee a town in Missouri and their vacant house was burned down after the 14-year-old daughter accused a high school football player of rape, The Kansas City Star reports.
Daisy Coleman, now 16, was forced to drink alcohol and have sex with Matthew Barnett, then 17, at a party at his house in 2012 before leaving her on her doorstep in 22-degree weather, Coleman’s family told police. Barnett, a defensive end on the Maryville High School football team and a grandson of a former state representative, insisted the sex was consensual.
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 Sherriff Darren White told the Star. “We did it well. It’s unfortunate that they are unhappy. I guess they’re just going to have to get over it.”
Later, Coleman and her older brother, Charlie Coleman, were harassed and threatened at school and on the Internet, their mother, Melinda Coleman, told the Star. The family eventually moved from Maryville to Albany, Mo., which they had left three years earlier to escape another bad memory; Melinda Coleman’s husband, a doctor, was killed in a car crash in 2006.
After the Colemans moved, a mysterious fire burned down their vacant Maryville home, which was up for sale. Daisy Coleman reportedly is in therapy after multiple suicide attempts.
