Katie Koestner admitted at the start she remains shy, and somewhat uncomfortable speaking in front of crowds.
Despite more than 25 years in the national limelight, she remains the same soft-spoken girl who dreamt of being everything from a ballerina to an Air Force pilot, that is, until she was raped the evening of a first date.
Her story resonated loud and clear Tuesday evening in the Allen Community College gymnasium.
Koestner ignited a national firestorm in 1991 when she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as the first publicly documented victim of date rape. On Tuesday, she spoke about why young adults, or anyone else, should remain vigilant in exposing such horrors.
Koestner spoke about growing up as an honor student, where her high school’s favorite pastime was likely cow-tipping, and choosing to attend William and Mary College because of a former boyfriend.
Despite the break-up, Koestner remained excited, eager to see what lie ahead.
She remembered vividly a dorm party organized by one of her fellow dorm-mates — she lived in an all-female residence hall — and seeing “him,” a sculpted young adonis with perfect teeth and designer clothes.
“He had this awesome hair, great jawline, cool shoes and buttons on his shirt,” she joked. “I had not seen buttons on a shirt in a while. I thought, wow, that is commitment to wardrobe right there.”
KOESTNER was smitten.
She intentionally stationed herself so their paths would cross. Eventually, they did, and the pair hit it off.
They discovered they were in the same chemistry class and agreed to study together.
“We so diligently studied the atoms and molecules — for three minutes,” she said.
Instead, their conversation wandered to other topics. Mainly life in general.
We were seeing each other every day. We weren’t dating, we weren’t hooking up, we weren’t hanging out, exactly, or shagging, chucking…” she said, rattling off a list of ways to describe having sex.
Eventually, he asked Koestner out on a date. To a restaurant. With cloth napkins.
“Wow, cloth napkins,” she remembered. “That was a big deal.”
