BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — A man has been charged with rape and accused of assaulting an Indiana University student while she was intoxicated and vomiting in a campus bathroom.
According to a probable cause affidavit, the woman had been drinking alcohol with friends in a room at the Teter-Thompson residence hall on December 2, 2021.
She told IU police she became intoxicated and decided to lie down on the floor when another student, 18-year-old Samuel Elliott, tried to touch her inappropriately.
The woman then felt ill and went to a restroom to vomit, according to court documents. The woman said Elliott followed her into the restroom and asked her if they could have sex. She told him she was too intoxicated to make a decision.
According to the affidavit, she continued to throw up when she looked behind her and saw Elliott had his pants down. The woman told investigators Elliott then raped her as she continued to vomit.
The female student said Elliott was interrupted by a FaceTime call from one of her friends. She said he instructed her to tell her friend nothing happened and then walked her to her dorm room.
Court documents show later that evening, another one of the woman’s friends found a used condom in the restroom where the reported attack happened. Police said he put the condom in a plastic bag and stored it in his dorm room fridge before releasing it to investigators.
“I think that’s crazy. It definitely happens way too much,” IU freshman Peyton Belch said. “I think it’s also crazy I didn’t even know about this one.”
Students told us it’s unsettling to hear of yet another sexual assault on campus. This is at least the second sexual assault arrest in roughly a week. Last week, Kalp Patel was charged with attempted rape in connection to an incident at Birch Hall in January of 2022.
IU has seen a big increase in sexual assaults reported to campus police. According to the university’s crime logs, more assaults have been reported since the beginning of the school year than what police normally see in an entire year.
Sally Thomas is the director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and says it’s possible there is a correlation with the increase in alcohol abuse university officials are seeing.
“The perpetrator is using alcohol as a way to get someone to a point where they really can’t consent. They’re not in their right mind,” Thomas said.
Thomas said her office is stepping up outreach to organizations and will put more emphasis on things like consent training. She said the silver lining in all of this is that more people are reporting what happened to them so the university and police can take action.
“It’s them standing up and saying, ‘Hey, what you did is not OK, and I want some accountability,'” Thomas said. “And I have a lot of students come to me and the reason they want to report is that they don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
“When they report it allows the university to take action and remove that person from campus,” Thomas said.
According to the Herald-Times, Elliott turned himself in at the Monroe County Jail after a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
Although Elliott was a student at the time of the rape, an IU spokesperson said he is not currently listed in the student directory.
