Maryville Rape Survivor Daisy Coleman Meets Mom of Teen Who Killed Herself After Similar Ordeal

In Part 2 of our interview with subjects of the powerful new documentary "Audrie & Daisy," we look at the story of Daisy Coleman. In early January 2012, when she was a 14yearold high school freshman, Coleman and her 13yearold friend, Paige Parkhurst, were invited to a small gathering of high school athletes. The girls had already been drinking when the boys came to pick them up. Daisy blacked out at the party. She says Matthew Barnett sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious, while Jordan Zech, a star high school wrestler, took videos. Barnett would later claim the encounter was consensual. Later that night, the boys dumped Daisy Coleman in her front yard in the snow, where her mother found her, halffrozen, in the morning. Charges were initially brought and dropped against the boys accused of assaulting Daisy and videotaping it, raising suspicions the Nodaway County prosecutor was influenced by Matthew Barnett’s role as a football player and his grandfather’s position as a Missouri state representative. When Daisy’s mother, Melinda, began to raise questions, she lost her job. The family’s house in Maryville mysteriously burned to the ground. Daisy says she was suspended from the cheerleading squad and incessantly bullied. People told her she was "asking for it" and would "get what was coming." She was hounded on social media, called a skank and a liar, and urged to kill herself, which she tried to do, multiple times. We speak with Coleman, along with her mother, Melinda Coleman, and Sheila Pott, the mother of Audrie Pott, who committed suicide after she was sexually assaulted and bullied online afterward. Melinda and Daisy Coleman met Audrie’s mother Sheila for the first time when they arrived for our interview.

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