From different directions yesterday, a new and ugly picture emerged of the Sept. 12 incident at Temple University that prosecutors have decided they could not prove was rape or any other crime.
The details included the recollection of a witness of a raunchy fraternity joke about the woman, and Granlund's vouching for the woman's basic credibility.
"I know this girl. I met this girl. I spent hours with this girl. She was taken advantage of. In a way - not an illegal way - she was made to do something that in other circumstances she might not have done," said Granlund, reacting in a telephone interview to comments made earlier in the day by Derita, Evers and their attorneys on the TV talk show AM/Philadelphia.
"Taking advantage does not necessarily imply compulsion or forcible compulsion. You can take advantage of some other weakness. It might be an emotional weakness," Granlund said. "I really don't believe that she lied. There were inconsistencies, gaps in the evidence, things we could not get from her. It became clear that we couldn't sustain our burden."
Among the inconsistencies were the woman's conflicting statements to police, Granlund said. In her initial statement, the woman said Derita and Evers raped her on a pool table, and that four other men then assaulted her in an adjacent room that was so dark she couldn't see their faces.
In a subsequent statement to investigators, the woman named several of the men in the blackened room, Granlund said. The prosecutor, who heads the district attorney's Rape Unit, said there were other inconsistencies, but declined to elaborate.
Other parts of the investigation proved inconclusive, she said. While investigators recovered condoms from a wastebasket at the scene, that was almost a week later.
"Whether those condoms were used on the night in question, I really don't know," said Granlund. "But to say that she demanded they use condoms is false, based on what I know."
The defendants at first declined to discuss the incident. But yesterday on TV, with their attorneys at their sides, they offered their version.
"Everything that did occur that evening was with consent, and some but not all was her idea," Derita said. "I had dated her one time before. . . . I had in fact slept with her one time before, about a week before the incident."
Evers told the TV audience: "She invited herself over to the house. . . . She mentioned, 'You guys always have beer and . . . party for me. So I want to buy the beer tonight.' . . . I think she had two 12-packs of beer.
NO SPECIFICS
"It was a party in our apartment with 12 people. During the party, different things happened. I really don't want to get into specifics."
The show's host, Wally Kennedy, asked: "Did you do anything immoral?"
"I believe we did," Derita said.
"Yes," said Evers. "If you go back to the Bible, I guess we ate the apple."
A caller asked if the woman should lose her anonymity.
Evers' attorney, A. Charles Peruto Sr., said her name should be made known. ''This gal had some mental difficulty. I don't mean to suggest that she . . . didn't know what she was doing." In court on Tuesday, Peruto had used her name. Granlund objected and the name was stricken from the record.
Among witnesses police interviewed since the incident was Jim Lockhart, vice president of Alpha Phi Delta. Yesterday, he showed a reporter around the stucco and white-trim fraternity house on Diamond Street, stopping to point out the pool table. Its green felt top had been confiscated as evidence.
THE PARTY
Lockhart and another fraternity member, Dave Landsman, said the woman was one of five who arrived at the house about 11 p.m. on Sept. 11. She stayed for hours, they said - after most of the other women had left. The incident occurred about 4 a.m.
The pool table had been in the house just a week, and had already become an inside joke, Lockhart said.
As she was getting herself together to leave, the woman became the target of that joke, recalled Lockhart, who said he was present that night.
"Someone told her there was a bet to see who would get laid on the pool table first," Lockhart said. "Then he said, 'I guess it was a three-way tie.' "
The woman grew angry, Lockhart said, and shouted, "I'm not a whore," as the fraternity brothers laughed.
About 12 hours later, in an interview with Temple police, she charged that she had been raped.
Her allegations led authorities to charge Derita and Evers, both Alpha Phi Delta members, with rape and related offenses. But on Tuesday, at Granlund's request, those charges were dropped.
Peruto has contended the woman was prompted to make the allegations after hearing frat members joke about her.
At one point, the TV show's host, Kennedy, asked: "What kind of man participates in what fraternities call a gang-bang?"
Evers: "Why don't we turn the question around? What kind of woman?"
Kennedy: "No, what kind of man takes part in this kind of thing?"
Derita: "I would say a man who is using very poor judgment."
Evers: "It wasn't a planned thing. It was very spontaneous. And I just want to throw the ball back in your court. What kind of woman?"
Kennedy: "I think that's a very legitimate question, but you're dodging mine. What kind of man participates in group sex?"
Derita: "I can answer it if you let me. Someone who uses poor judgment, perhaps a little immature, maybe caught up in the moment a little bit, sees an opportunity for something that just doesn't ever happen, out of curiosity perhaps, there was an immorality there, I definitely believe that, but I'm not a violent person. I'm not a criminal at all."
Granlund said the woman was discouraged about the decision to drop the case.
But "she was fine with it after we explained to her why we had to do it," the prosecutor said.
Efforts to contact the woman have been unsuccessful. An acquaintance said yesterday that the woman's family had taken her away from the area for a while to recuperate from the trauma.
Granlund reflected on the wider impact of her office's decision.
"Other women can either be discouraged because we obviously scrutinize these cases pretty carefully, or they can be encouraged because they know that if they withstand the pretrial scrutiny that the police and the D.A.'s office will put them through, then obviously they will have a decent shot. We feel their case is winnable."
