Preliminary hearing set for men charged in alleged Haskell rape

Douglas County District Judge Paula Martin set a March 25 preliminary hearing Thursday for two men charged in connection with the alleged rape of a woman in a Haskell Indian Nations University dormitory last month.

Lawrence police arrested the two men, 19 and 20, last month after a woman reported they had taken turns helping each other rape her multiple times during the early morning hours of Nov. 15.

The 20-year-old man was charged with three counts of rape by force or fear and one count of sodomy. The 19-year-old man was charged with two counts of rape and one count of sodomy.

The victim told investigators the alleged incident occurred when she was left alone at a party in the men’s shared Haskell dorm room, according to the probable cause affidavit justifying the arrests.

One of the men charged told detectives that “he knew what he did was wrong” and that the victim was not intoxicated at the time of the incident, according to the affidavit. The second man, who was a Haskell football player, invoked his Miranda Rights and declined to give a statement to investigators, the affidavit said.

At a hearing Thursday, the former football player’s attorney, Sarah Swain, requested that the preliminary hearing be delayed until DNA test results could be received from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

The men, who are out of jail on $75,000 bonds, were expelled from Haskell “in light of the allegations,” Swain said, and drove in from their homes in Anadarko, Okla., for the Thursday hearing.