Witness recalls angry reaction after best friend reported being raped by Haskell students

As soon as her best friend told her that she had been raped, Aryana Bedeau said she rushed into the room of the two men behind the reported crime.

Inside the Haskell Indian Nations University dormitory room, Bedeau said she encountered one of the two men, Galen Satoe, and began to hit him.

“It was heat of the moment,” she said. “I was so mad I don’t remember what I said.”

But she remembers the reaction she got. Satoe, 22, laughed and pushed Bedeau out of the room, denying that he and Jared Wheeler had hurt the woman, Bedeau testified Thursday in Douglas County District Court.

Bedeau said she also texted the two, saying “I’m going to get you mother (expletives).”

Eventually the police were called, Satoe and Wheeler were arrested and Bedeau’s friend, who was then a freshman, was taken to Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

Bedeau and others testified Thursday in Judge Paula Martin’s courtroom about the events surrounding the Haskell incident, which took place between Nov. 14 and Nov. 15, 2014. The testimony was a part of Satoe’s second criminal trial, which began on Tuesday.

Last summer, after his first and only criminal trial ended with a hung jury, Satoe’s then-roommate, Wheeler, pleaded no contest to a single felony count of aggravated battery. He was sentenced in November 2016 to serve 60 days, the maximum the judge could give him, and he is currently serving that time in the Douglas County Jail.

The jury in Satoe’s first trial, which concluded in August 2016, was also unable to reach a unanimous verdict and a mistrial was declared.

In this, his second trial, Satoe faces two felony counts of rape and a single felony count of aiding and abetting attempted rape.

Bedeau said that on the evening of Nov. 14, 2014, she, the woman, Satoe, Wheeler and others spent time in the school’s dorms. At one point the group left and picked up beer, then returned.

Satoe and Wheeler were highly intoxicated, Bedeau testified. She was not intoxicated, nor was the woman, she said.

At one point in the evening — after the group returned from the beer run — the crowd thinned to just Bedeau and the woman with Satoe and Wheeler in the dorm room the two men shared.

The dorm’s residential adviser, Ernie Wilson, testified on Thursday that he discovered the two women in the men’s room after curfew and kicked them out. At the time the two women seemed happy and nothing about the circumstances alarmed him, Wilson said.

After making sure the coast was clear, Bedeau said she and the woman sneaked back into Satoe and Wheeler’s room, though Bedeau said she left quickly to go to the bathroom.

In past trials the woman testified that after Bedeau left the room Satoe began to force himself onto her and when she cried out to Wheeler for help he instead held her down and the two raped her.

Defense attorneys for the two men have claimed throughout that the sexual encounter was a consensual threesome.

Wilson said he routinely patrolled the dorm throughout the entire evening and morning and he didn’t hear anything alarming. He did, however, note that he could tell Satoe and Wheeler were intoxicated when he came by their room earlier. And when he was asked if he noticed beer cans in the room he replied, “No, I wish I did.”

After 4 a.m. Wilson said he encountered Jonae Scabbyrobe, another Haskell student, and Bedeau in a hallway, but they wouldn’t tell him what they were discussing. Shortly afterward, he learned the police were on their way to the dorm.

During testimony Wednesday Scabbyrobe said she first spoke to the woman after the reported rape and went to find Bedeau. The two then went to the bathroom with the woman, who showered, and then they called the police, Scabbyrobe said.

Both Wheeler and Satoe were arrested on Nov. 15, 2014. They were released from jail later that same day after posting a $75,000 bond each. Both were expelled from the university.

Satoe’s trial will continue Friday morning and is scheduled to go into next week.