Derrick Van Orden says Ron Kind denied justice to woman who accused NFL players of rape in 1995

MADISON - The issue of how women are treated by men is front and center in the most competitive congressional race in Wisconsin. 

Republican Derrick Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL who is seeking to unseat longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind in the 3rd District, is criticizing Kind for dropping charges against NFL football players accused of raping a woman in 1995 while they were training in La Crosse. 

Van Orden's criticism comes after Kind said Van Orden was unqualified to represent the district after Van Orden bragged in a 2015 memoir about exposing a male colleague's swollen scrotum to unsuspecting female officers, which Kind described as sexual harassment. 

"Are these the 'Wisconsin values' Ron Kind claims to represent?" Van Orden said in a statement about the Kind's decision to not bring charges against the football players.

"Choosing to protect his prosecutorial record in the buildup to his first Congressional campaign instead of pursuing justice for the victim? This further proves what so many in the 3rd District feel about Ron Kind: he isn't working for them, he's working for himself and will stop at nothing for personal power and enrichment," Van Orden said.

Kind was an assistant district attorney for La Crosse County 25 years ago when a 38-year-old Eden Prairie, Minnesota, woman claimed she was sexually assaulted by four New Orleans Saints players who were participating in a training camp in the western Wisconsin city. 

"As a prosecutor, I have an ethical obligation to not bring charges unless I can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law. The evidence in this case didn't meet that ethical standard," Kind said in a statement.

Kind declined to be interviewed for this story, but spokeswoman Sarah Abel said Van Orden was questioning work done by men and women in law enforcement to "distract from Van Orden's own record of sexually harassing women in the military and bragging about it."

Van Orden said the district should be outraged by the decision.

“Ron is quoted as saying that the victim of this horrible sexual assault was not credible enough to prosecute her attackers. This is shameful,” Van Orden said.

Kind and other investigators did not pursue charges because they believed that they would not be able to convince a jury of the players' guilt, according to an Aug. 18, 1995, article in the La Crosse Tribune.

"Kind said the players' version of the events would cast doubt on the allegations of the woman, a nude dancer at a downtown Minneapolis club," according to the story. 

Scott Horne, a La Crosse County judge who was district attorney at the time, said Thursday there were concerns among prosecutors, including Kind, about whether the allegations were credible.

"My memory was that the investigation was thorough," Horne said. "There were a number of facts about the case that allowed questions about credibility and I think the consensus in the office was that was not a case in which there was a reasonable probability of getting a conviction."

Assaults reported in UW-La Crosse dorm

According to La Crosse Tribune archives, the woman said she was assaulted in a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse dorm after leaving a bar with the players.

Kind said that four people are known to have had sex with the woman that night, but said the woman offered contradictory stories, according to the Tribune. One player said the woman had performed sex acts with at least six players.

"I believe that the credibility of the woman who reported the assaults would be insufficient to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the sexual contact she had with numerous Saints players was not consensual," Kind was quoted in the Tribune as saying at the time.

Kind said that the woman could not account for an hour of the time she spent in the dormitory, provided inconsistent accounts and that interviews with 30 players "provided a consistent pattern of information about what happened," according to the story. 

The accused players were not named. 

Lori Peterson, Minneapolis lawyer for the woman who accused the players, did not respond to a request for an interview.

In an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1995, the woman said she was worried her occupation as a stripper was affecting authorities' attitudes toward her claims.

"If I'm guilty of bad judgment — and I don't believe I was — does it mean the sentence is rape and being humiliated? I don't think the police believe what happened to me," she is quoted as telling the newspaper. ”You know, they always come down on you, this backlash of ‘What were you doing there in the first place?’ ”

A La Crosse bar owner gave detectives a video of the woman stripping before the alleged incident, seeking to cast doubt on her credibility, according to the Tribune. At the time, Kind said, "What she does for a living, what she did for a living really had no impact on deciding not to go forward with charges." 

The woman was examined at a local hospital, which revealed "no injuries, tearing, or bruising," according to Kind. Peterson, the woman's attorney, told the La Crosse Tribune her client had "black and blue marks" as well as "tender areas" where her arms had been held. 

Peterson said the players tried to block the woman's escape from the dorm and that she escaped by throwing a chair at a player. 

"Once she got outside, another woman who had heard her screaming came up and asked her what happened. Peterson said her client collapsed on the street and the second woman flagged down a police car," according to the Tribune.

Linda Martín Alcoff, director of women’s studies and professor of philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York, said in a 2019 essay that sexual assault can affect a victim's memory, leading to inconsistent statements. 

"Sexual violations, whether violent or of the more manipulative sort, tax a victim’s mental capacities," Alcoff wrote. "One’s faculties don’t always shut down, but they are engaged in high-stakes multitasking. This can explain the fuzzy contours of some of our peripheral perceptions, even as we maintain with crystal clarity the memory of the physical act and who did it. The identity of the perpetrator is reinforced after the fact by survival instincts because we need to remember whom to avoid."

But Horne said the investigation was thorough and that the district attorney's office at the time was aggressive in pursuing such crimes. 

"Ron, like the other prosecutors, was not at all gun-shy about going in and trying different cases but on the other hand we had an obligation to make sure we have a case that has merit," Horne said. "Those are difficult calls because on the one hand, you have a young woman may have suffered significantly ... and on the other hand, the allegation is a really serious one. You don’t accuse people lightly of committing that crime."

Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.