Daisy Coleman, who opened up about her rape ordeal in the Netflix documentary Audrie & Daisy, may have taken her own life because she was allegedly being stalked and harassed by someone she knew.
Coleman took her own life last Tuesday night at the age of 23, and her body was discovered after her mother Melinda asked police to do a welfare check, which was carried out before her death.
But it has now been revealed that she had also filed a harassment report ‘on the day she died.’
Daisy Coleman, 23, had told friends that she had been stalked for months. Se killed herself last Tuesday night. Her body was found after mother Melinda asked police to do a welfare check
‘Every media outlet is blaming her suicide on her rape, and ignoring that she was going through so much before her suicide, and not putting any blame on this man for harassing her,’ a friend said.
‘She would rather kill herself than let this man kill her,’ an unnamed friend told People.
The identity of the man who is alleged to have stalked Coleman is unknown. However, Coleman is said to have posted on her social media accounts that she had contacted police regarding the alleged stalking and harassment by a man that had been going on since December.
On the same day she died, Coleman wrote on social media in messages that could only be viewed by friends that she was worried about leaving her house to walk her dogs or go to work.
Friends have told how she feared for her life before her death – she ended up killing herself last Tuesday night
Coleman, pictured, is said to have contacted police about repeated stalking and harassment by the same man although police have not confirmed the reports
According to People she told how she was not eating or sleeping well and was disturbed by the alleged ongoing harassment.
Coleman alleged the man had shown up at her house repeatedly and banged on her door in a Facebook posting before her death.
She even told how she was under the impression that the man had managed to steal keys to her apartment, allowing him to have direct access.
In a private Facebook posting Coleman said that she was looking for a new place to live for her own safety.
‘She was so scared, she wanted to move,’ her friend says.
‘She never recovered from what those boys did to her and it’s just not fair. My baby girl is gone,’ Coleman’s mother Melinda said last Wednesday. Daisy Coleman is pictured, right
Her co-star Audrie Pott died by suicide 10 days after being raped in 2012
‘We had no previous contact with her before then,’ John Romero, the public information officer for the Lakewood police in Colorado said to The Sun, who also noted that there was an ‘active and open investigation’.
The local police department responded to a call from Melinda at around 4pm on Tuesday about a ‘possibly suicidal party’, and sent paramedics and agents trained in crisis intervention, according to TMZ.
Coleman then reportedly spoke to the agents for over an hour, but did not say or give any indication to them that she wanted to harm herself.
Because of this, she was medically cleared, and there was no legal reason to hold her on the grounds of mental health.
However, at around 8.30pm, police received another phone call from a female friend of Daisy’s saying that she had shot herself inside her apartment.
Picture shows Daisy Coleman, left, age 14, and Paige, right, age 13 shortly before they were both raped on September 3, 2012
Daisy Coleman is photographed in her room on October 16, 2013 at age 16
Coleman spoke in the 2016 Netflix film about how she was plied with alcohol in 2012 and raped in a Missouri house at the age of 14, but no one was ever convicted.
Just 10 days after being raped by the boys, Audrie Pott took her own life.
The documentary looked at the bullying Coleman was subjected to after she came forward about the incident. She revealed that she suffered from ‘constant pain’ and panic attacks subsequently.
At the age of 14, Coleman and her best friend Paige Parkhurst, 13, were raped in the basement of one of the high school’s most popular footballers, the scion of a well connected political family.
Much of what happened on the night of September 3, 2012 is undisputed.
At around 1am Coleman and Parkhurst were having a sleepover at Daisy’s house when they decided to sneak out – at the invitation of Matthew Barnett, now 22. His friends Jordan Zech, 24, Nick Groumoutis, 23 and Cole Forney, 22, were also present.
Coleman’s brother, Charlie, 23, regarded Groumoutis as his best friend but was wary of Barnett. He told her not to text him but she ignored him.
Almost immediately the girls were separated. Barnett admitted having sex with Coleman – 14 is the age of consent in the state of Missouri – but said it was consensual and that Coleman did not drink heavily until afterwards.
Coleman recalled being offered a drink from what the boys called the ‘bitch cup’ – a tall shot glass – then being offered a second and not remembering anything after that.
He used Nick Groumoutis’s cell phone to record but claimed he thought they were just ‘dry humping.’ The video was deleted – after reportedly being passed around the school – but never retrieved by law enforcement.
Parkhurst’s rapist confessed and was convicted in juvenile court, but it was only after a second investigation that Coleman’s alleged rapist was convicted in adult court on the lesser charge of child endangerment.
Daisy Coleman had tried to take her own life numerous times since the ordeal in 2012
‘We want to remember Daisy for the incredible person she was and the legacy she has given us with SafeBAE,’ the organization to help high school students affected by sexual assault said Wednesday
Coleman told Dailymail.com in 2017: ‘I was very young [when it happened] so obviously I did not cope with it well. I was very negative towards myself. I lost all of my confidence. I didn’t realize who I was anymore because I lost my position on the cheerleading squad.
‘I faced a lot of identity problems and a lot of that journey was just redefining myself and recognizing that even though all these people are saying all these things about me doesn’t mean that they’re true, because I get to define who I am.’
She added that she had forgiven her rapist: ‘I feel no resentment towards my attacker only because I have come to realize that he was only passing on some form of negativity to me which at some point was passed onto him so once I came to that realization…that made me forgive him in a sense even though he never presented an apology.’
For confidential support call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
Coleman told Dailymail.com in 2017: ‘I feel no resentment towards my attacker only because I have come to realize that he was only passing on some form of negativity to me which at some point was passed onto him’