A former Southern Adventist University student accused of rape now is free of all charges after prosecutors decided to drop the case they admitted would have been difficult to win at trial.
Rajiv Gomer, who lives in the Washington, D.C. area, had been facing one count of felony rape stemming from an alleged incident in 2004 in an off-campus apartment on Jenkins Road.
His accuser and former girlfriend did not make a report to police until the end of 2006, records show. She also posted a video about the incident on YouTube and has several other videos posted in which she talks graphically about sex.
Hamilton County Assistant District Attorney Boyd Patterson said Monday in court that the decision to drop Mr. Gomer's case did not have anything to do with whether or not the incident happened.
"It had everything to do with the nature of the evidence," Mr. Patterson told the court.
Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern agreed the case was difficult. Prosecutors had no physical evidence of a rape because the accuser waited almost two years to report it.
Authorities instead had used a taped conversation between Mr. Gomer and his accuser, also a former Southern Adventist student, to build the case against him.
The case ensnared a private religious university that adamantly is opposed to premarital sex. The accuser also alleged the university did nothing to help her when she first began talking to professors about the incident.
Southern Adventist officials have declined to comment on the case, saying only that the "well-being of our students is very important," according to a university spokesperson.
The defense team also aggressively pursued the school to force it to turn over psychological evaluation records on the accuser as they sought to prove Mr. Gomer was innocent of the charges.
Judge Stern ruled in September that Southern Adventist did not have to hand over the records, despite defense attorney Kelli Black's contention that the girl had abandoned all expectations of privacy by talking about the incident on the Internet as well as talking about it to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
The accuser's video, called "To my terrorist," is delivered in a melodramatic monologue regarding her feelings and emotions surrounding the alleged assault. It has had more than 1 million page views, according to YouTube.
"That video had a cathartic effect on me," the accuser said earlier.
THE STORY SO FAR
Authorities arrested former Southern Adventist University student Rajiv Gomer in 2007 on charges arising from an alleged rape against his girlfriend in 2004 in an off-campus apartment. Authorities dropped the single felony rape charge Monday, admitting it would be difficult to win the case at trial because there is no physical evidence of the crime.
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