Original subtitles

[music]

MAN: Let's roll. Sound.

Reslate. Abby Honold interview.

Call mark.

PRODUCER: Okay, Abby.

ABBY HONOLD: When I really think about how different my life is

and the college experience that I wanted to have,

I get really angry all over again.

[Abby cries]

[cries]

It's been almost 10 years since I was attacked,

but I live with the impact of this every single day.

OPERATOR: Okay.

Sorry.

He took so much from me.

And it was not only him.

I was immediately aware of the fact that Greek Life

had taken Daniel's side,

and his fraternity brothers were bragging

that they had gotten me recorded,

saying that I lied.

The entire Greek community was against me.

[cheering]

There is no place in the world that is more exciting

or thrilling than sororities and fraternities.

But you don't know what actually goes on behind closed doors.

All Greek Life has some sort of a tradition of secrecy.

MAN: This was a powerful organization.

I mean, it was a serious coverup.

The amount of power that the fraternities have,

it's so thoroughly woven into the nature of the universities.

JIM PIAZZA: There is always the same playbook.

OPERATOR: 911. What is the address of your emergency?

They start the coverup, nobody talks.

DOUG FIERBERG: Hazing is a huge problem.

And it's resulted in tragedy.

Someone was burning a cross on the lawn.

They would grab their members, force their face down.

They'd make them do a line of cocaine.

ABBY: It felt very sadistic.

He wanted me to be hurting.

You send your kid off to college and this happens?

[music]

My name is Abby Honold.

I grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota.

I was the oldest of six kids.

I just spent so much time taking care of them

that I started to think that I would want to do

something with children,

and the University of Minnesota had great options.

[music]

ABBY: I was very excited to start at the U in 2012,

to just finally move into the dorms,

and I really did feel like I was starting

a new chapter in my life.

The University of Minnesota is a gigantic campus.

You can go there and be a commuter student

or you can try to be a part of the social life,

like a sorority or a fraternity.

[cheering]

KEVIN RANDOLPH: Most of the fraternities and sororities

at the University of Minnesota are on Greek Row.

And during the football season, there are certain frats

that are well-known for having large parties.

[cheering]

When it comes to game day,

Gopher football is huge on campus.

[cheering]

BECKY REDETZKE FIELD: Folks are going to be out

tailgating in their Gopheralls.

During my first two years of college,

I loved tailgating and going to the games.

[cheering]

It was the highlight of my student experience.

STUDENTS: [chanting] Minnesota. Minnesota.

Yeah, Gopher.

Rah!

[cheering]

[music]

ABBY: I was a junior.

It was a big game day.

I woke up at 8:00 that morning

and started drinking pretty soon after with my friends.

We were just having lots of fun.

And then we walked over to the tailgate party

at the Floco Courtyard.

Floco Courtyard was really packed that morning.

It was on the same street as a lot of the frats,

but you didn't have to be in Greek Life to be there.

It was really a mixed crowd.

I was with a friend who introduced me

to Daniel Drill-Mellum.

He was also a junior.

I didn't know him, but I found out later

that Dan was very involved in his fraternity,

which was Sigma Phi Epsilon.

WILL DAMMANN: The SigEp guys were very interested in partying

and having a good time.

And they weren't the type of people I hung out with

and not really the type of people in my chapter.

And Dan, he was this western suburb kid.

His mom was a doctor.

Dad was a professor at the university.

So, obviously, he was well connected.

He had interned for Senator Al Franken,

Governor Dayton.

These very, you know, prestigious positions

with very important people.

ABBY: Dan seemed very friendly.

He started telling me that he needed help

carrying down more alcohol.

And I hesitated because I just didn't wanna get

separated from my friends.

But he reassured me, "You know, we'll only be gone two minutes.

"It's gonna be fine."

He said that his apartment was right across the street.

And I could see the building.

I felt like, okay, you know, why not help him?

So I left with him.

I went across the street.

[indistinct chatter]

As soon as we were inside the apartment building,

everything changed.

It made me really anxious how quiet it was in his apartment.

His voice changed.

It was deeper.

And then I saw there were two pre-poured shot glasses

that were sitting on the counter,

and that made me feel really strange.

He finished checking the rooms

and he walked towards me so fast.

I felt like I was blacking out just from fear

because all of a sudden there was something very wrong.

[music]

He grabbed one of the shot glasses

and he backed me up to the wall

and was trying to force me to drink it.

I was so scared in that moment.

I felt like I couldn't move.

Then he grabbed me and pulled me into his bedroom.

And I was just in complete shock.

By the time I realized what was happening,

he had--he had taken my clothes off,

and I completely panicked at that point

because I knew what was about to happen.

[sighs]

When Dan started raping me,

I said, "It hurts." I told him to stop.

I said, "I don't wanna do this."

I said, "I wanna go back to my friends."

And he would just ignore me or he'd say, "No, not yet."

I was just trying to survive in each moment.

Some of the time I just zoned out

and I was just looking at the window.

Like I just didn't want to be mentally present.

But he wanted to keep drawing my attention back

so he would keep talking to me.

He kept forcing me to experience everything that was happening.

It felt very sadistic.

He wanted me to be hurting.

At one point, he was suffocating me

and then bringing me back, allowing me to regain

consciousness before suffocating me again.

And I just remember thinking things

like I hope they find my body.

And I was--

I was so upset thinking about my siblings,

because I thought how--

I don't want them to hear that this happened to me.

Sorry.

[Abby sobs]

In fraternities, there is a serious rape culture.

NEWS REPORTER: Your daughter partying at a frat house

being called rape bait.

Young men openly talk about targeting women

to get them grossly intoxicated and sexually assault them.

At the University of Minnesota,

one of the rumors that you first hear on campus

is that there are these lions

in front of the SAE fraternity house.

And the rumor was that they would paint these lions

every time that there would be

a rape by a chapter member.

[music]

NEWS REPORTER: The Sigma Nu house at Old Dominion University

has been suspended after these banners were hung off

a balcony as freshmen arrive for class.

And we've seen numerous examples around the country

where fraternity men are defiantly identifying

how they're in control and women who say no actually mean yes.

STUDENTS: [chanting] No means yes, yes means anal.

No means yes, yes means anal.

It's upsetting

that there are people in fraternities

who still think rape culture is a joke...

MICHELLE GUOBADIA: ...and things we should make songs

and chants about.

[cheering]

That's simply not what these organizations

are supposed to be about.

MAN: Let's roll.

Sound. Speed.

MAN: Abby Honold interview.

Mark.

[sighs]

I was in a lot of pain

and Dan was not going to let me leave his apartment,

so I really started fighting back at that point.

He kept trying to pull me back down

but I just--I kept getting up.

Finally, he gave up and all of a sudden his body language

and his voice and everything changed

and he said,

"This was really fun. We should do it again sometime."

All I did was just gather my things

and I just booked it out of his apartment.

When I was outside, it was still very busy on campus.

It was just chaos.

And so at that point, I called 911.

[Abby cries]

[Abby cries]

[cries]

[cries]

[siren wailing]

At the hospital, a sexual assault nurse examiner

did Abby's exam.

And when she saw her injuries, she gasped.

KEVIN: The nurse documented cuts and bruising.

She had a torn frenulum, which is the skin

that attaches the lip to the gum.

Having injuries as a sexual assault is pretty rare.

She said these were some of the worst injuries

that she had ever seen in her 15 years' experience

of doing hundreds of sexual assault exams.

KEVIN: The tailgate party that Abby attended was off campus,

so when Abby called 911,

emergency dispatch sent police officers

from the Minneapolis Police Department,

and then Drill-Mellum was taken downtown for questioning

and booked into Hennepin County Jail.

POLICE: Uh-hmm.

No.

[beep]

WOMAN: Paging Dr. Bender.

The detective arrived at the hospital

and told me that he had been at the Hennepin County Jail

interviewing Daniel.

[music]

ABBY: He immediately just seemed kind of annoyed

about being there, like this was a big nuisance in his day.

And he said, "Just so you know, this isn't gonna go anywhere.

"This is very he said, she said,

and nothing's really even wrong with you."

My forensic nurse told him about my injuries

and how severe they were.

And then he said, "Well, this is serious,

"and so we'll charge him."

And I thought, "Finally, this is over.

"He is gonna take this over.

"I can be done now until it's time to go to court."

[music]

ABBY: The next morning, I was so scattered.

I was still in a lot of pain.

And I got a message on Facebook from this guy named Connor.

And he said that he was Dan's fraternity brother and roommate,

and expressed sympathy to me and asked if we could talk.

So I called him like he'd asked.

Abby had no clue that this was recorded.

It appears to be an iPhone recording,

the video and the audio.

You can see part of Connor.

Dan is not there, but it's pretty clear,

if you watch and listen,

that there is also another fraternity brother in the room.

And then the red flags popped up.

ABBY: I got really uncomfortable at that point.

I thought these guys don't want me to press charges.

I tried to be polite but I ended the phone call.

In the Greek system,

if one of their fraternity brothers

has been accused of a crime,

you see fraternity brothers rally around him.

They may even go out of their way to intimidate victims

into changing their stories or keeping their stories

to themselves rather than report to the police.

And a big factor in that is the oaths of loyalty

that these young men take to the other men in their group.

[music]

DOUG: The brothers have agreements

to cover for each other

and not to be ratted out,

particularly for things

that they've probably engaged in as well.

And this group mentality can overcome

the individual's interest

in or ability to tell the truth,

to do the right thing.

A few days later,

I got a call from the detective

and he opened with, "I have the phone call."

[music]

ABBY: So the fraternity brothers had given over

the recording of the phone call.

I thought it was just disgusting

that Connor had recorded the conversation.

And the detective, he said, "I know that you lied."

"I remember the phone call.

"What about the phone call says that I'm lying?"

And he said, "I heard you describe

"everything as consensual."

I was thinking, "When did I say that?

"How could I have said that?"

But I had never heard the phone call,

nobody gave me the recording of the phone call,

and I had no idea

what I really said.

[music]

He told me that they were closing my case

and Daniel had been released.

After that, I was immediately aware of the fact

that Greek Life had taken Daniel's side.

And, of course, they had probably already heard

his version which is that I was a liar.

The entire Greek community was against me.

[music]

ABBY: Daniel got let out with no charges.

And one of his fraternity brothers

was going around bragging

that they had gotten me recorded,

saying that I lied and that they had gotten Dan out of jail.

KEVIN: Because the charges were dropped,

it fueled the narrative within the Greek system

that he hadn't done anything wrong,

that Abby had made this up.

She cried rape.

She had mental issues.

WILL: I remember first hearing

there's a girl claiming that she was raped

by this SigEp member.

She's crazy.

ABBY: His fraternity brothers and sorority women

rallied behind him.

I was told at the time that they had even had meetings

and they had said, "Do not associate with Abby Honold.

"Abby Honnold, specifically, is banned

"from any kind of Greek Life event."

Dan was able to shape the narrative

with the Greek community from the beginning.

He had a lot of people come to his defense

and assumed that that couldn't possibly be true.

It's easy to look back

and realize how naive you were.

Um, I was.

Once Abby was ostracized by the Greek community,

that's bled over into the student body at large.

[music]

ABBY: I would be in class and people would refuse

to work with me on group projects.

I remember there was somebody saying,

"I can't believe that she could show her face here again.

"You know, she's such a [bleep] person."

It was humiliating.

I was terrified of running into Daniel.

I thought to myself, "I don't want him

"to be able to hurt another woman."

And so I made an anonymous

blog post naming Daniel.

When I shared that,

I got a couple private messages at that point

from other women who had been assaulted by Daniel.

There was a victim when he was in high school.

There were victims all throughout college.

Almost all of them really were terrified of Daniel

and they didn't wanna report to police.

I had to try to do something, and I knew that I needed help.

[music]

I had met Abby when I was working as a victim advocate

with the Aurora Center.

It's one of the oldest on-campus

sexual assault crisis centers.

Abby was very traumatized and needed help.

I provided her with some information

about an organization that had attorneys

available to help represent victims of sexual assault.

And within a day, Abby retained

Amy Isenor as her attorney.

When I heard about Abby's case,

it quickly became concerning

the possibility that Daniel had multiple victims

and that there was a serial rapist on campus.

[music]

AMY ISENOR: So I wanted to investigate

what options we had for Abby.

I attempted to reach out to the police department

to obtain the records and this tape,

but law enforcement wasn't cooperative with me.

So I reached out to Detective Kevin Randolph

at the University of Minnesota Police Department

that handled sexual assault cases

to see if there were any further options.

My initial answer to her is no.

I had no jurisdiction.

This was in an off-campus apartment building,

so this is a Minneapolis Police Department case.

They investigated it.

And I had no access

to the tape that caused this case

to get dropped at the prosecutor's office.

However, there were other things available to Abby,

for example, the Title IX process

through the university itself

and not through law enforcement.

[music]

BECKY: Sexual assault falls under Title IX.

And a Title IX complaint

can often accomplish a faster result

than the criminal justice system

by removing someone from campus if they are found responsible.

So, in Abby's case,

that was the next best alternative.

The process can involve the university

looking at any documentation that might be relevant,

kind of getting a full picture of what happened.

[music]

When we were going through the Title IX process,

the university lawyer called us in

and showed us the recording of the phone call.

He said, "I need you to clarify for me what was said."

AMY: He had obtained the tape from Daniel's attorney,

and that was the first time that Abby and I heard that recording.

- CONNOR: So he kind of-- - ABBY: Yeah.

CONNOR: --trapped you? Okay.

I got the tape and I called Kevin back

and I said, "Kevin, you have to hear this."

For a long time,

the piece of evidence

that was supposedly proving that I lied

was this phone call.

When we finally got a copy of the tape,

I turn it on and it's a video.

And you can tell that there's two guys in the room.

ABBY: They were two fraternity brothers.

And the one who was talking to me, Connor--

--was being recorded by the other fraternity brother

who was whispering questions and prompts to him.

Um--

On the call, you hear Abby describe her encounter

with Daniel Drill-Mellum as rape twice within the first minute.

She just clearly said twice,

"He raped me. He raped me."

I'm immediately thinking,

"This isn't evidence for the defense.

"This is evidence for the prosecution."

Then Connor says to Abby--

[music]

When I finally heard the recording

and I understood what had happened.

The first part of the word was a little bit lost.

I thought that they had asked me,

was it actual sex or was it sexual sex?

It was one of those that I heard.

And I remember thinking, that's a weird question.

But the way that I interpreted it was,

you know, kind of was it rape or was it sexual assault?

Abby thought that by asking her

whether they had actual sex meant

was it penetrative sex,

so she replied, "Yes, it was penetrative rape."

I felt vindicated because, for months,

I had basically been questioning my own sanity,

thinking that I said something that

I now knew for sure that I never said.

I was extremely angry with the prosecutor

and the detective

who both had claimed that they listened to that call.

I'm guessing the prosecutor's office

never listened to the video for themselves.

They just took Daniel's attorney's word for it,

that it was an admission of consensual sex,

decided to drop the case and move on.

Ultimately, the university and their Title IX process

found Dan responsible for violating

the student conduct code,

and he was suspended from campus for 10 years.

[music]

Having Daniel out of school was definitely a relief,

but it wasn't justice.

He needed to be put somewhere

where he couldn't hurt people anymore.

After listening to the recording of that call,

Kevin agreed that this case needed to be reinvestigated

and taken further.

And so he asked for jurisdiction

to be released to him,

making Kevin the new lead investigator.

I put together a report,

along with this recording,

and, still, Hennepin County says

it's too muddy because the initial drop charges.

We are not gonna pursue this

unless we can get another victim to report.

At this point, I am pissed.

It was like why...

why is what he did to me not enough?

Why should anybody else have to come forward

and go through this

when I know you already have enough evidence

on my case alone?

Now I've been assigned the task

of trying to find another victim.

So I went back to the documents

from the Title IX process.

As I'm looking through the documents,

I find a Post-it note and it referenced

"Mother of a victim wanted us to know

"her daughter was assaulted by DM."

And there was-- and her phone number.

So I decided to take the chance to reach out

and see what she has to say.

She said, "My daughter, Margot,

"was very violently raped by Daniel Drill-Mellum."

[music]

I had numerous conversations with Margot's mother

over the phone.

And she described her daughter

being in a Halloween party with Drill-Mellum.

It was the fraternity party at the SigEp house,

which is Daniel's fraternity.

She thought he was a nice guy.

They talked for a while.

He led her down

into the laundry room of the building.

He climbs on top of her and started raping her.

She is terrified.

She is trying to fight back.

And when it's over,

he walks out the door and he says, "Hey, that was fun.

"We should do it again sometime."

There were chilling echoes of what had happened to Abby.

Daniel said the same statements to Margot

that he had said to Abby.

And Margot was raped

one week prior to Abby being raped by Daniel.

Margot's mother told me that her daughter

was so terrified of this guy

that she had to leave school.

But she had no interest whatsoever

in pursuing a police report.

I had no other avenues that I can pursue.

At this point, everything gets put on hold.

This moves from March, when I originally got the case,

it's now the end of October,

and nothing has moved on this case.

ABBY: I thought that it was kind of the end of the rope.

I didn't think anybody else was going to report,

and I completely understand why they didn't.

Look at what had happened to my life for reporting.

[music]

ABBY: I had to finish certain classes from home.

The next semester, I had to completely withdraw

and take the semester as a loss.

I was really struggling.

[cheers and applause]

KEVIN: It's football season again.

I am working at a football game

on October 31st, 2015

when my cellphone rings...

and it's Margot.

She told me that she was hearing from her friends

that Daniel Drill-Mellum was at a fraternity party

at the SigEp house

and she wanted me to go and arrest him.

[music]

BECKY: It was one year to the day that

Dan had raped her.

He's back.

He's at the same party,

the annual Halloween party at the fraternity house.

Margot understood that to be

a violation of Daniel's suspension,

that he wasn't supposed to be anywhere on campus.

Unfortunately, Daniel had spotted a loophole

which allowed him to be at the frat house

because it's not on campus.

I told her, "Unless, he's in the act

"of committing a crime right now,

"there's nothing I can do.

"But if you can give me a statement,

"we can get Daniel Drill-Mellum arrested

"and put in prison."

A week later, I get a call from the front desk

that Margot is here to speak with me

and she was finally ready to report.

[music]

After Margot reported to Kevin,

he was able to refile it

with the Hennepin County attorney's office.

And with two victims coming forward,

the county attorney was then willing

to bring charges against Daniel

for both Abby and Margot's rapes.

BECKY: They're ready to charge the case

when they look into where Dan is at.

They discover that he is currently abroad in Australia

for an unknown amount of time.

It was a very frustrating roadblock.

I just felt like he had escaped punishment once again.

And I thought, "He has so much money.

"He's gonna be able to just travel around the world

"and that there would-- there would be no chance now

"that he would ever face charges."

[music]

KEVIN: I started looking into Drill-Mellum behind the scenes

because I can't let him know

that I am at the point of pressing charges.

His social media has gone silent,

but a search of his name

brings up a website featuring his sister.

She is getting married

and Daniel Drill-Mellum is one of the ushers

in the wedding on January 1st.

So I know he is coming home.

This is a chance to get him.

[music]

I started looking into what is it I have to do

to arrest Daniel Drill-Mellum.

I talked to airport police.

They suggested that I have his passport flight

so that he can't book a ticket

without Homeland Security getting notified.

We wait and we wait.

The day of the 22nd,

I get notified by Homeland Security

that he just booked a ticket for December 24th.

So we suspected that his attorney

was watching for charges to be filed

because who books international travel two days in advance?

So they waited until Dan was officially in the air

to sign a warrant,

so he could do nothing about the fact

that a warrant was out there waiting.

KEVIN: I got a uniformed officer and a marked squad.

We went to the airport.

We literally rode the jetway to the plane

and we're standing there

when they opened the airplane door.

I said, "Stand up.

"You're under arrest for sexual assault."

My first phone call was to Abby.

I told Abby, I said, "I got a Christmas present for you.

"I...

"I just arrested Daniel Drill-Mellum."

[music]

I just kept thinking,

finally, he was arrested

and he couldn't hurt people anymore.

[music]

KEVIN: The courtroom was packed that day.

Many of the people were

Daniel Drill-Mellum's fraternity brothers.

ABBY: Just seeing that they still had his back

is just disappointing.

I thought that I would get an apology...

from them at some point.

Nobody has ever apologized.

NEWS REPORTER: Daniel Drill-Mellum described

in court today as a serial rapist.

In the end, reaching a plea deal with prosecutors

to avoid trial,

he gets 74 months

or slightly more than six years in prison

and he'll have to register as a sex offender

for the rest of his life.

[music]

WILL: I remember reading about Abby's case.

I immediately went back

to when I heard that rumor about the SigEp kid

that supposedly raped a girl

but it wasn't true and she was crazy,

and realizing like, "Oh, my God. Like this is the same person."

Like--and so I wanted to reach out to her

and I said, "I'm so sorry,"

and asked Abby if she would be willing to come

share her story with my fraternity.

And I think it was extremely moving

to hear how members

of the Greek community...

perpetuated the victimization of her.

Abby took all of this nearly two-year battle

and channeled it all into some amazing activism.

She was able to work with Senator Klobuchar

and get the Abby Honold Act passed,

which has a goal of being able to provide funding

for trauma-informed training to all officers.

Ultimately, I know now that

I can really survive anything.

I had no idea how strong I can be.

[music]

Tim Piazza had 18 drinks in 82 minutes.

MAN: I see Tim Piazza on the couch,

and I saw bruises on his chest.

I'm advocating, "We need to get him to the hospital."

They're like, "Oh, no, no, no. That's not gonna happen."

All the bruises on his body, it's like...

like "What the heck was going on in that house?"

All of this was essentially a coverup.

You send your kid off to college

and this happens?

It doesn't make any sense.