photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Kalim Akeba Lloyd Dowdell at his trial on Sept. 19, 2023, in Douglas County District Court. Dowdell was accused of raping a woman when she was asleep after the two had spent the evening drinking together.

A Lawrence man who was accused of violently raping a KU student in 2018, but who pleaded the charge down to aggravated battery after the jury hung in the rape trial, was sentenced to probation Friday in Douglas County District Court.

At the sentencing of Kalim Dowdell, 27, Judge Stacey Donovan heard from the victim and the victim’s mother about how the actions of Dowdell — including not only the alleged assault but also relentless stalking in its wake — affected the victim.

The woman, who was living in a KU dorm on Aug. 25, 2018, said via a statement read by Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald that Dowdell raped her so viciously that a wooden support on her dorm bed broke. As the Journal-World reported, she said she had told Dowdell when he came to her room after an evening drinking that she did not want to have sex with him, only to wake after passing out to find him assaulting her.

At a trial in September of last year, a jury was evenly split over what happened that night, resulting in a mistrial. Greenwald indicated that he would retry the case, but in the ensuing months, the parties instead worked out a deal for Dowdell to plead no contest to aggravated battery.

The victim, after recounting the onset of panic attacks, declining academic performance and a PTSD diagnosis following that night, told the court how Dowdell had robbed her of her safety and her happiness — as well as her school, friends and city as she felt compelled to move away to escape the memory and the subsequent stalking.

“I ended up paying the price for what he did,” she said in the statement. It was not an aggravated battery, she said, but much more than that — for which probation was not an adequate punishment.

Her mother, who addressed the court in person, described feeling “beyond sad” the night her daughter said she had been raped, and she said she was “not at all happy with the plea that was offered.”

However, she also praised Greenwald for advocating for her daughter and for obtaining a felony conviction that Dowdell will have to live with.

Donovan also indicated that the parties had worked hard to negotiate a plea deal in the wake of the jury’s inability to reach a verdict in the case.

At the end of the hearing, she sentenced Dowdell to 12 months in prison followed by 12 months of supervised release, but suspended that sentence to 24 months of probation. She also ordered him to have no contact with the victim, among other probation requirements, and to pay more than $600 in various court fees. Costs for his appointed attorney, Adam Hall, were waived due to indigency.

The victim and her mother noted that Dowdell had been in legal trouble before over his behavior toward women.

As the Journal-World reported, he was placed on diversion in 2017 for a misdemeanor conviction from harassment by telecom device for sending pictures of his penis to a New Zealand blogger in 2015. In that case, he was accused of hounding the blogger with unwanted messages and photos, and an arrest affidavit alleged that he had sent sexual messages to several people using a number of social media accounts.