Cleveland County (Okla.) District Attorney Greg Mashburn announced in a press conference today that criminal charges were not warranted in the case of Oklahoma running back Rodney Anderson, who was accused of rape by a woman who filed a protective order against him last week.
Anderson was under investigation for rape by instrumentation after he had a sexual encounter with his accuser in November. From the ESPN report on the protective order:
In the protective order filing, the woman says she was drinking at a bar on Nov. 16 when she met Anderson for the first time. She says she was planning on taking an Uber home, but Anderson’s friends “were insistent that he take” her home.
The woman says that over the weekend, through a conversation with a friend, she started “recalling images and feelings of him forcing his fingers” inside her and biting her. She says she tried to get away to put clothes on, but he followed her and asked what she was doing.
Prosecutor Susan Caswell said that there was no evidence that the accuser ever communicated to Anderson that she was not consenting on the night of their encounter. She added that there were friendly texts between the two afterwards, with the woman suggesting that they get together in her final messages. Anderson didn’t respond to that text, Caswell said.
According to Caswell, the accuser’s friend told police that the accuser was initially excited about her encounter with Anderson and told the friend that she wished they had actually had sex. After about two weeks, the woman said she was starting to remember that her actions with Anderson weren’t consensual.
Mashburn said in the conference that they could not prove that the woman lied when she said the encounter went farther than she consented to, but there was no evidence showing that any of their sexual activity was not consensual. Norman Police will not bring any charges against Anderson’s accuser.