Story Archive

Take Back the Night?

Elizabeth Daly, 20, was fresh from an evening of sexual assault survivors’ stories at a Take Back the Night rally at the University of Virginia when six men and one woman came after her and two sorority sisters who were with her. One drew a gun. One jumped on the hood of her car. When she started her car — a necessary step to lowering the windows to speak — they tried to break the windows. So she drove off, trying to go to a Charlottesville police station, and one of the students called 911. When a vehicle with lights and sirens appeared, Daly stopped, and only then discovered that her assailants, who had “unidentifiable badges,” were plainclothes Alcoholic Beverage Control officers. They’d suspected Daly of buying alcohol while under 21. Naturally, they arrested her — not for buying beverages, since the only beverage she’d bought was bottled water — but for eluding them and grazing them with her SUV when she drove off. The local prosecutor declined to prosecute, and after a widespread outcry, the ABC, whose first review of the incident said its agents had done nothing wrong, announced that it would include a uniformed officer in future confrontations. (AC/Charlottesville Daily Progress) ...The ABC maintained, however, that the young women should have done whatever the armed men demanded, just in case they were some sort of law enforcement.