Five years ago, Kelly would have never seen trouble coming her way. Her freshman year at Iowa State, she was in the engineering honors program, engineering clubs, intramural sports and the symphony.

“I never drank before. That definitely wasn’t who I was. I was a straight-laced nerd,” Kelly said.

That all changed after she met Rick during the summer of 2009, before her sophomore year. Rick had just finished up his tour with the Navy, and Kelly was impressed by his experience and worldliness.

At first Rick did everything right.

After about a month, something inside Rick changed when he went off his prescribed mental health medicine.

A night in July 2009, after watching DVDs at his grandparents’ home with Kelly and having a few alcoholic drinks, Rick decided he wanted to have sex. As Kelly resisted his attempts, Rick’s anger flared.

He pushed Kelly onto the bed, smacking her head into the bedside table. When he noticed she was bleeding, he grabbed her by the hair, dragged her into the bathroom and shoved her under the shower faucet. He then flung her back onto the bed and proceeded to have his way with her.

Kelly was in complete shock. Her body hurt and her mind was frantically running, but on the outside she kept her cool.

“I was absolutely terrified. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to anger him,” Kelly said.

She lay there, silent.

“Freezing is a completely legitimate and common response to trauma,” said Marie Martinez, sexual assault services coordinator at Assault Care Center Extending Shelter and Support.

After Rick was finished, he told her he only did it because he wanted her so bad and loved her. She didn’t know what else to believe.

“I was trying to think, ‘Was I just raped? Can my boyfriend rape me?’” Kelly said.

Kelly would have night terrors about this night for the next two years, choosing to stay awake at night instead of replaying this petrifying scenario in her head.

Kelly decided not to tell anyone about the incident and stayed with Rick. The sexual assault continued throughout their relationship.

“It’s just like you go numb, because there’s nothing you can do about it,” Kelly said. “You can try to say no. You can try to fight it, but the less you fight, the easier it is because he doesn’t get angry so you don’t get hurt.”

Kelly was mentally manipulated to the point she thought this was how people showed affection.

“There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to intimate partner violence,” said Angie Schreck, executive director of Assault Care Center Extending Shelter and Support. “There is the emotional attachment that will make you feel tempted to make excuses or to blame yourself for what they are doing.”

Kelly knew if she told her friends they would blame her, the victim, because that’s what they did when they heard about other rape cases.

“People do that because they learn it everywhere,” Schreck said. “People do that as a defense mechanism: ‘If I can think of a reason that happened to her, and I can make that reason something that’s not about me, then maybe I’ll feel like that won’t happen to me.’”

When Kelly went back to school, the relationship ended. Kelly was devastated at the time.

After Rick, everything about Kelly changed. She dropped out of all her extracurriculars, was put on academic probation and started drinking three nights a week.

In her eyes, she was ugly, fat and stupid.

“I never wanted to have sex because it made me feel good, it was just because it was what I was good at,” Kelly said.

Kelly began to sleep with random guys after nights of partying.

“It was kind of a feeling of helplessness, like no matter what you will not take me seriously, you will not respect me so I might as well sleep with you,” Kelly said.

During January of her sophomore year, Kelly was assaulted yet again.

Kelly was at her new boyfriend Ryan’s apartment in Campustown, who had some friends coming to stay with him.

It was a dark and cold Thursday night — mug night — and even though she didn’t want to walk by herself, Ryan wouldn’t walk her home.

Kelly had done this walk many times before. As she turned off Ash Avenue and began walking on the dark, unlit path along the river by the Memorial Union parking garage, she heard someone running behind her.

She felt someone jerk her backpack and pin back her arms, and another person come in front of her and start tugging at her jacket and other clothing. The thought that this was someone she knew disappeared instantly when she inhaled the scent of alcohol and cigarettes coming from the two men.

The next thing she remembered was washing her face off, looking in the mirror at her red eyes and smelling the strong scent of pepper spray on her coat.

Kelly told her brother what happened the next day and filed a report to the ISU police. They were not able to identify who assaulted her because there were no cameras or call buttons. Kelly was furious with herself and the fact that her now three assaulters were running free.

Kelly thought, “You let this happen to yourself again.”

A week later, Kelly’s friend, Jon Lacina, went missing. It was all she could take. She broke down and called her parents to tell them what happened.

She attended ISU counseling from the third week in January until the school year was over.

After breaking up with Ryan, during her junior year, Kelly began to struggle with anorexia. She got down to a 25-inch waist at a height of 5-foot-8. Rick’s manipulation from the year before was still controlling her life.

Even with her eating disorder, Kelly did not realize she needed help again until she was in the middle of a hook-up, sober enough to know what was going on.

“I was so disgusted with myself and him. … I just started bawling my eyes out,” Kelly said.

She got up and left without explaining to him what happened.

Kelly went back to counseling, voluntarily changed to a major in the science field, made new friends, and took on new hobbies.

She started dating her fiancé, Levi, on Oct. 6, 2010.

Levi would notice when Kelly would avoid certain parts of campus, and when she would wake up crying from nightmares.

He finally had to ask Kelly, “What did Rick do to make your mom talk about it all the time and you to be so scared?”

That is when Levi heard the details of Kelly’s dark past with an abusive boyfriend.

Levi had to be extremely careful about ordinary things a boyfriend might do. Once in awhile Kelly would panic, saying things like, “Don’t hug me tight, Rick used to do that.”

Intercourse was scary for her a couple times, but Levi says this only happened when she was drinking and could not hide her emotions.

“I think in her mind she saw the bedroom as a bad place.”

As their relationship has grown, Levi has seen Kelly’s personality blossom.

“She started to open up to more people,” Levi said. “She likes to help people and see the smile on their face, where before she had the mentality of just getting through the day.”

Kelly credits Levi with saving her life, but Levi is still unsure to this day what he did out of the ordinary.

“All I was doing was being me, and being the person my parents taught me to be,” Levi said.

Kelly has now graduated and is living out-of-state. She hopes her story will help other victims of sexual assault.

“You will find someone who loves you and everything will be okay. You have to love yourself in order for someone else to love you.”