Charlie Coleman recounts his family’s ordeal

It had been just over a year since Charlie Coleman was awakened by the sound of his mother screaming.

Charlie tried to forget the sound of that cry, but on this morning he couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible had happened again.

Instinct led him to his bathroom, which was locked. When he didn’t get a response after knocking, Charlie knew his hunch was right and broke down the door.

Rape, depression and a month’s worth of antidepressants left his younger sister Daisy, who was 14, lying unconscious in front of him.

Charlie immediately picked up the limp girl, carried her to the car and sped off to the hospital.

He was overcome with the terror of losing his sister.

Small-town attitude

Michael and Melinda Coleman and their four children — Charlie, Logan, Daisy and Tristan — made up a close-knit family in small-town Albany, Mo.

As the oldest of the Coleman siblings, Charlie, who is now a sophomore at Baker University, was used to playing the role of a protective big brother. He was only 13 years old when he felt the entire weight of that responsibility fall on his shoulders.

On Feb. 17, 2007, Michael was on his way to watch his son in a wrestling tournament with Daisy and Logan when his truck swerved on a patch of black ice and overturned into a ravine.

Logan and Daisy made it out safely, but Michael didn’t survive. When the Colemans didn’t receive the news they were hoping for, Charlie was crushed.

“I threw a fit,” Charlie said. “I started hitting stuff, crying and vomiting.”

Charlie lost much more than his father that night. He lost his fishing partner, a friend to play catch with, his little league coach, someone who was always there for him.

“Charlie is a strong and steadfast guy,” Thomas Hawkins, Charlie’s roommate at Baker, said. “When his father died, he knew he had to step up and raise his brothers and sister, and he did. He took charge. He’s been that father figure.”

To cope with the loss of his father, Charlie became motivated by athletics.

“(Sports) were my escape from everything,” Charlie said. “I would go to a field, a weight room, find a wrestling mat, anything just to keep my mind off of it.”

However, he had a hard time letting go of the memory in his small hometown and was ready for a new beginning.

“We just needed to get away from it,” he said. “It seemed like it followed us in Albany.”

Enter Maryville.

A fresh start

Despite the publicity his family has received, Charlie Coleman remains active on the Baker campus as a student and member of the baseball team. Coleman is shown here working at the baseball team’s booth during the Maple Leaf Festival on Oct. 19.Jordan Ratterman

Charlie’s family moved to Maryville, Mo., during the middle of his sophomore year of high school. At first, Charlie was intrigued by the town because of its size and the fact that nobody knew his business.

“Hardly anyone knew us, so that was nice,” Charlie said. “And there were more opportunities for me and my siblings, academically and athletically.”

Charlie would become a three-sport athlete in Maryville, but he was most excited to play baseball – a chance he didn’t have in Albany, where the high school wasn’t big enough for a team.

Within two weeks, Charlie had already formed acquaintances with three classmates whom he would consider his good friends: Nick Groumoutis, Cole Forney and Jordan Zech.

It wasn’t until the end of the boys’ junior year that the popular Matthew Barnett would start to hang around them as well.

“I didn’t think (Matthew) was a bad person to talk to or hang out with at the time, but I always knew he did some shady stuff,” Charlie said. “I knew he could get me in trouble, but I also knew he never got in trouble or stayed in trouble.”

Barnett is the grandson of Rex Barnett, a former state representative who was a Missouri highway patrolman before making a name for himself in politics.

Charlie remembers that Matthew had always seemed proud of his status in Maryville and liked to boast that he had gotten out of multiple offenses, including a DUI and two MIP charges. Charlie distinctly remembers a time when Matthew was bragging at football practice about getting off the hook and one of the defensive coaches called him out about it.

Charlie never knew how Matthew always got out of trouble, so he made sure to be cautious when Matthew was around. Charlie preferred hanging out with his other friends instead.

Those friends and his new home would turn out to be much different than the first impression they gave, though.

On Jan. 7, 2012, after a wrestling tournament, Charlie invited Zech over to play video games. Zech declined saying that he was going to stay in for the night.

Little did Charlie know, a different Coleman would be hanging out with Zech that night.

“I don’t think they planned on getting caught.”

Sometime in the early hours of Jan. 8, Charlie was awakened by the sound of his mother screaming.

Melinda had found Daisy lying outside in the below-freezing weather wearing only a T-shirt and sweatpants. The young girl’s hair had frozen to her body and she was missing socks and shoes.

Charlie’s first thought was, “Why is she sleepwalking outside?”

Come to find out, Daisy wasn’t aware of her surroundings, but it wasn’t because she was sleeping. It was because the boys Charlie called his “good friends” had dropped her on the Coleman’s front porch three hours earlier.

As his mom tried to warm Daisy up, Charlie went outside to see if he could discover any clue of what might have happened to his sister and found her cell phone lying in the snow.

Charlie went through her messages from the night before and recalls texts from Matthew that read, “Nick, Jordan and Cole are here, but you cannot tell your brother,” and another that asked, “Do you want to drink?”

Charlie felt closest with Groumoutis, and he called him right away to see what had happened. Groumoutis told Charlie to hold on but then never got back to him.

“I kept texting and calling him,” Charlie said. “Soon, 15 minutes had gone by and he kept hitting the ignore button. I knew instantly that he was going to shut his mouth and not say anything.”

Charlie made his way to the hospital, where he found his mom in a state of hysteria. Daisy’s blood alcohol content was at 0.13 at 9 a.m., nearly seven hours after sneaking out of her bedroom window to hang out with Matthew and his friends.

Charlie said that after hearing the result of Daily’s medical examination, the family felt sure that she had been raped.

Once word of the incident hit the town, it spread like wildfire. Gossip allowed for many different versions of the story, but after the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department questioned the boys at the Barnetts’ house that night, law enforcement officials had a clear indication of what actually happened.

Matthew, who was 17-years-old at the time, confessed to giving alcohol to Daisy and having sex with her. He was charged with a felony for sexually assaulting an incapacitated victim and a misdemeanor for endangering the life of a minor.

The police found out that his actions were recorded by Zech on an iPhone. Zech was charged with sexual exploitation of a minor, a felony. Although Charlie never saw the recording himself, he knows that it was passed around school and “heard it was pretty gross.”

None of the boys who were with Matthew that night have talked to Charlie since the incident. When he found out what happened to Daisy, Charlie was in disbelief. He didn’t expect that his friends would ever do such a thing.

“Honestly, I would have stopped it for one of their sisters,” Charlie said.

#MattAndJordanAreFree

Sympathy was expressed for Daisy and her family at first, but it wasn’t long before the attitudes changed.

Classmates and members of the community began to side with the accused boys.

Two weeks after the incident, Charlie received a text from his sister during school.

“She texted me crying from the bathroom because someone yelled at her in the hallway that she was a lying whore,” Charlie said.

The harassment became unbearable, and Charlie’s family would soon leave town.

Daisy, Logan, and Tristan transferred back to the Albany school district. Melinda was fired from her job. All the while, Charlie became frustrated because it seemed like Matthew and Zech were being praised.

“After the incident, I didn’t really have any friends,” Charlie said. “I was kind of on my own, but I knew that I needed to finish school in Maryville and finish playing baseball so I could possibly play in college.”

As if the harassment weren’t enough stress for the family, the charges against Matthew and Zech were eventually dropped without warning.

The lead investigator of the case, Sheriff Darren White, blamed Melinda. He says she would not cooperate and tell her side of the story. However, Melinda said she was ready and willing to work with the prosecution from the start and was upset by the outcome.

In an interview with the Kansas City Star, White said, “We did our job. We did it well. It’s unfortunate that they are unhappy. I guess they are just going to have to get over it.”

Charlie didn’t have time to react to the news before it had blown up at Maryville High School.

“I didn’t really get a chance to hear it for myself before people started tweeting about it and running up and down the halls disturbing class and yelling about it,” Charlie said. “I can remember one girl who yelled down the hallway, ‘Matt and Jordan are free.’”

Soon after word hit the hallways, a “Twitter storm” began, Charlie said.

“All kinds of people, people I never would have imagined, tweeted about it,” Charlie said. “I was reading tweets that said, ‘that’s what you get, you skank.'”

Charlie also remembers one tweet that read, “My Twitter feed is being raped, but oh well. I won’t press charges. #MattAndJordanAreFree.”

No one dared to say anything to Charlie’s face; however, he said he was harassed as well. On the night of his final home wrestling match, Charlie said he was booed while being honored.

“(Senior night) was exciting because I was close with some of the wrestlers and their families so I felt safe in that environment,” Charlie said. “I was the only senior and when I went out for my ceremony, I just remember looking up in the corner of the gym and I could see Matthew’s friends and they were booing me. I didn’t understand why, but it went around school and people were joking about how funny it was.”

Charlie was glad to get out of Maryville and come to Baker University to continue playing baseball, the sport that continued to be his escape.

After BRāV, a sexual assault awareness and prevention group at Baker, gave a presentation to the baseball team, Charlie opened up to his closest friend and teammate, Tevin Thompson.

“One day, we were just talking and he asked me if he could tell me a story about something big that happened in his life,” Thompson said. “It wasn’t something I expected at all, just because of how good of a person Charlie is.”

Charlie mentioned the incident to his roommates and the few other teammates he felt comfortable with as well, but kept it to himself for the most part. Hawkins says that Charlie “doesn’t wear stuff on his sleeve.”

“Charlie has carried the weight of (Daisy’s story) on his shoulders,” Hawkins said. “He likes that the story is coming out, but he doesn’t seek attention or sympathy from it.”

Getting Daisy back

Daisy’s story made national news after it was reported in the Kansas City Star on Oct. 13. Dugan Arnett, the lead reporter for the story, investigated the case for seven months.

Charlie was OK with the process but didn’t expect the outrage that it has generated.

Actually, Charlie didn’t expect that anything would come from the story, since that’s how it had always been in Maryville.

“I knew it was going to be a part of the healing process for my sister, so I was all for it,” Charlie said. “I just wanted my little sister back. She wasn’t herself for the longest time, so anything that would help her, I was OK with.”

Daisy and Melinda have appeared in various interviews with national media outlets including CNN, 20 for 20, Inside Edition and XO Jane. The family has also been contacted by Dr. Phil and Oprah.

At Baker, Charlie finds it hard to be away from his family during this time. He doesn’t let the attention affect him on the field, though. Thompson says he hasn’t acted any differently than normal.

“Charlie came up to the team and told everybody that he wouldn’t be at practice one day because of what’s going on,” Thompson said. “He said he wanted to be here, but had some stuff he needed to take care of. He came back the next day, same person happy, working hard. Through everything that’s happened, I think it’s brave and courageous how he’s handled it all. He really is a great person.”

Charlie isn’t sure how the case will ultimately end or whether his old friends will get in trouble. He just hopes Daisy’s story will make others think twice.

“If you really look at everything we have worked for, it’s already accomplished,” he said. “My sister is being heard finally. She isn’t being called a lying s-l-u-t. Other girls might think it’s OK to step up (if they’ve been raped) and they won’t be scared to talk.”

Although the case continues to generate national attention, as far as Charlie’s concerned, “the battle is already finished.”