Venoy Overton Rape Allegation Was Result of "Orgy Party," Seattle Police Report Says
On Saturday, January 8, 2011, Venoy Overton was the starting point guard for the University of Washington basketball team. That afternoon, he played 29 minutes, scored eight points, and dished out seven assists in a lopsided 103-72 home victory for the Huskies over Oregon State. Two days later, on January 10, KIRO broadcast the news that a "prominent UW athlete"--later revealed to be Overton--was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl he'd met on Facebook. 
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KIRO's story, based on interviews with the girl's family and a police report narrative filed the morning after the sexual assault allegedly occurred, suggested that the teenager was lured to an apartment, plied with alcohol, and forced to have sex with the 23-year-old Overton even though she "told him repeatedly to stop and that she just wanted to meet an athlete she admired." But according to an exhaustive 227-page Seattle Police report obtained by Seattle Weekly, the girl was a willing participant right up until the messy ending.
After the allegations surfaced, Overton was demoted from the basketball team's starting lineup. A month later, King County prosecutors declined to press sexual-assault charges in the case. Overton was eventually charged by the Seattle City Attorney with furnishing alcohol to a minor, a misdemeanor, and on March 31 a judge granted him a "dispositional continuance," allowing the charge to be dropped if Overton performs community service and is not charged with another crime in the next year.
The lack of punishment for the former UW star renewed speculation in some corners that Husky athletes live above the law, just as they did during the so-called "Victory in Ruins" era that coincided with the football team's most recent Rose Bowl appearance in 2001. Owing to the juicy scoop, the version of events in KIRO's report became the dominant narrative, with subsequent stories--including several on Daily Weekly--assuming the worst about a situation that involved drinking, a college athlete, and an anonymous teenage girl from the Bellevue area.
But the report obtained by Seattle Weekly recounts in explicit detail a wild sexual encounter with multiple partners in which the supposed victim was apparently a willing participant. The partially redacted document contains text messages exchanged between Overton and his 16-year-old accuser after the incident, as well as transcriptions of recorded police interviews with Overton, the teen, her friend, and an unidentified UW football player who was in the room with Overton and the girl when the alleged rape occurred.
The incident took place on the evening of January 8, after the Huskies' rout of Oregon State. The two girls explained to police that they told their parents they were going to the movies in Bellevue but instead took the bus to Westlake Center. Overton's accuser--whose name is redacted throughout the report--said that she had recently added the UW senior as a friend on Facebook and struck up a conversation with him via the website's chat application.
"We just started talking and then we just exchanged numbers," she said, noting that the online relationship had only been active for a week or so. "I had a feeling that he was one of those guys that would, ya know, just get at me for, ya know, sexually, but I wasn't tryin' to go there. I was just tryin' to be friends and so this weekend I was gonna hang out to see like what kind of guy he was."
The girls went shopping at Westlake, and eventually struck up a conversation with three men on leave from the Navy in the mall food court. The accuser's companion, whose name is also redacted in the report, bluntly described to police the outfit her friend was wearing.
"She was kinda dressed like a ho," the girl's friend said. "She [was] wearing like black pants, like these tight black skinny jeans and then like this tank top where it's like down here. Like, you could see like everything on that girl."
Overton, meanwhile, had left the UW campus and was attending the Seattle University basketball game at Seattle Center with two male friends. He says he was reluctant to meet up, but relented after the girl and her friend pestered him with phone calls and text messages.
"I kinda was brushin' her off cause I didn't really, I didn't want to hang out but she just kept calling me," Overton told police. "Her and her friend was gonna catch the bus and then meet us at the McDonald's across the street from the Key Arena."
The girls said the three sailors escorted them to the Space Needle, then they parted ways and rendezvoused with Overton and his two friends at the fast-food joint. Overton recalled that the girls were drinking Tilt, a caffeinated alcoholic beverage, out of a coffee mug inside the restaurant. He claims he was unaware of the girls' age, and that his eventual accuser "said she'll be 18 in [a] month." He said he asked the girls in no uncertain terms if they wanted to go back to his sister's apartment to have sex.
"I just kept it, kept it real like blunt like 'OK, if you come with us like what you guys want to do?'" Overton told police. "I was [like] 'OK how about a orgy party?' And then she like, 'Yeah where at?' And I was like 'Are you serious?'"
The accuser's friend confirmed Overton's version of the McDonald's conversation, but the accuser herself remembered things slightly differently.
"We're eating and then we're asking 'What are we gonna do?'" the teenage accuser told police. "Then he suggested we have, what'd he say and how did he say it? He's like, and um, I think it was like an oral party or an orgasm party. And I was like 'What? Like, are you serious?' And then my friend was like 'Oh yeah I'm down.' And I was like 'Dude no, like I don't want to do that.' So then we ended up leaving with him and then we went to his sister's house."
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