Fay was frightened because she remembered the humiliation and rejection that followed her the first time the story got out, but she knew it was something she had to do.

Now, Fay Roepcke is a 22-year-old graduating senior at Chico State University, a leading and visible member of the campus student government, and an officer in a statewide student lobbying group.

Everything about her speaks of a young woman on the move, with a future so bright as the saying goes she has to wear shades. But earlier this academic year, she opened a part of her life that she had kept closed and private for many years.

Fay had been raped.

She was 15, a sophomore who attended senior honors classes in high school, popular and pretty. She went to a party at the home of a close friend. It was going to be wonderful.

Fay had tasted booze before, but she had never been drunk. She was flattered by the handsome, senior football star who was paying her attention.

He was bringing me my drinks. Later she became convinced at some point he drugged my drink.

At the time, all she knew for sure was the lights went out.

Apparently the senior took her outside, where he raped her in the back of a pickup. Then he savagely beat her. Prior to that night she had been a virgin.

The boy poured her back into her clothing and deposited Fay with one of her friends.

Fay spent the night at her friends home, and awakened to find herself covered in bruises and bleeding.

After realizing what had happened to her, Fay didnt immediately tell her family, but the rumor factory at school was going full speed.

I didnt know what to do. I was being told at school I was some slut because Id slept with this guy at the party.

When Fay finally told her mother, her mom didnt believe the story.

I think it was too much for her to deal with.

At home she was told she was lying. At school she was being told she was a slut, and at some level, she had her own doubts.

Since she was drugged and didnt remember anything about the actual attack, she found herself asking, Did I consent or something?

In her shaken and confused state, the mute but vivid testimony of her bruised and battered body was not immediately enough to prove even to Fay that she was the victim, the wronged party.

One of Fays high school counselors could see something was wrong with the usually stellar student, and called her in for a chat.

I broke down.

Fay sobbed out her story, and as required by law the counselor called the local police.

However, the police didnt come and arrest the senior. They came out in a patrol car, put Fay in the back seat, where the suspects ride, and took her downtown to discuss the assault.

Sitting in the back of that car was so embarrassing.

The police took her report. Again the rumors circulated that Fay was trying to make trouble for the football player, and she was the target of a whole new kind of scorn.

By the time the legal process had inched forward to the point where Fay had to decide whether she wanted to prosecute, enough time had passed that the attention of her fellow high school students had shifted to other matters.

I was not the scary person on campus any longer, recalls Fay, and her assailant was still the big man on campus.

She chose to not prosecute, hoping her life would return to something approximating normal, but what had been normal for Fay Roepcke had died that night in the back of a pickup.

Her grades collapsed.

There was a ridiculous amount of drugs and alcohol. In between I would show up (for classes) but I was wasted for months, she remembers.

She says she attempted suicide periodically.

At one point, a mental health therapist urged Fays parents to commit her to an in-patient psychiatric facility.

After tumbling into this personal abyss for months, something happened and Fay isnt even entirely sure what.

One day I woke up and said, My life sucks!

Whether it was a matter of hitting emotional bottom or something else, Fay cant say, but on that day Fay stopped drugs, stopped alcohol and even dropped the smoking habit she had acquired.

She again began going to parties, but this time she was always the designated driver.

On the night of her senior prom, often a day for copious excess, Fay said she drank a single wine cooler.

During her senior year in high school, she started attending community college classes.

She also had a boyfriend, one she credits for supporting her in the tough times.

She still wasnt happy about what she had gone through, but she was doing better.

After coming to Chico State, she majored in womens studies and finally had the space from the attack and the intellectual support to recognize she was the victim in this whole tragedy, but she was going to survive and prosper.

He took my virginity. He was not going to take my life, she says.

Fay became involved in an annual event at Chico State called the Survivor Speak Out, where women who had been raped or abused in other ways could share their experiences in the protected confines of a closed group.

It was an amazing process.

Then when her world seemed to be under control, she was blind-sided again, and again it involved alcohol.

Fay made the mistake of allowing herself to get drunk again, and the man she had been dating for a long time raped her while she was unconscious. While this case didnt have the brutality of her first experience, the sense of personal violation was still profound. And perhaps worse still, the man didnt see anything wrong with his behavior.

Under California law, sex with a person who by virtue of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs is incapable of giving consent is rape.

Fay was shaken when she realized an educated adult male somebody she thought loved her could do this to her and not see it as a crime.

That realization forced her to take another frightening step.

While she had shared her story in small, insulated groups, Fay had never really made her experiences public. Now, she decided she had to go public with both her rape at age 15 and the more recent assault.

She allowed the Chico State student newspaper, the Orion, to interview her.

All of a sudden, all of the ghosts from her high school days surfaced.

Fay had no idea how her fellow students would respond to her, but she remembered with painful clarity how her high school had reacted years before.

The day before the weekly paper was published, Fay teetered on the edge of having the story pulled.

When the paper came out that Wednesday morning, I was sick, and afraid to walk through campus.

However, the reaction this time was very different.

Faculty members told me it (the story) touched them and they hugged me. I got cards and phone calls (thanking her).

I had women coming up to me and telling me their stories. So many of those women told me, Ive never told anybody, about being assaulted.

Some of the women had suffered for years, without sharing or releasing any part of the pent-up pain.

Fay was particularly surprised by the number of male students who responded to the story.

I was happy the male students understood, that they were touched by it.

Looking back to the reactions, she says, Now, I say why was I afraid.

For Fay, the process of healing is a continuing effort.

Its there. Its part of me, but it doesnt affect me on a day-to-day basis.

She says she is also still cautious of men. Shes not sure if that caution comes from the intellectual understanding she can be victimized, or whether it is an emotional response.

However, it does mean strange guys who hit on her may come away with some battered feelings.

She said her response to a pickup line tends to be, What on earth gave you the right to approach me? I take it upon myself to make them feel like a jackass, she says.

As far as the future is concerned, Fay says the shades are still in order.

I love where I am going in my life. I love (that) I am single and independent and healthy. The amount of peacefulness in my life is amazing.