Maryville Teen Who Claimed Rape Attempts Suicide, Mother Says
A Missouri teenager at the center of a controversial rape investigation has attempted to kill herself and is currently "very messed up mentally," her mother wrote on Facebook.
"My daughter has been terrorized to the point she tried to kill herself last night. She may never be ok," Melinda Moeller Coleman wrote Monday. Her daughter Daisy Coleman, now 16, accused an older teenage boy of raping her while she was drunk in Maryville, Mo., in January 2012.
Melinda Coleman told television station WDAF-TV that Daisy attempted suicide following a party Saturday night where attendees harassed her on Twitter. She said Daisy was in stable condition at a children's psychiatric hospital in Kansas City, Mo.
Coleman did not reveal how the girl tried to kill herself.
Daisy accused Matthew Barnett, then a 17-year-old high school senior and the grandson of a former state representative, of raping her in 2012 and dropping her off, while drunk, on her family's doorstep in the freezing cold.
The case garnered national attention in October 2013 when the Kansas City Star reported on the allegations and prosecutor's decision to drop the charges against Barnett. The girl and her family say they were harassed and intimidated by members of the community.
The state at the time appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the case.
The identities of alleged sex assault victims are generally not published, but Coleman's family has gone public with her identity and her accusations.
On Monday, Melinda Coleman called on the hacker collective Anonymous, which helped bring attention to a rape case last year in Steubenville, Ohio, to rally the internet to Daisy's case.
"Where is Anonymous now…. Where are you and your super hacking skills and internet help now?… We really need them," she wrote.