Natalie, a single mother, dropped off her son at daycare, went to therapy and then returned home. She swallowed a fistful of pills, washing them down with a six-pack of beer. She was ready to end her life.

“I just wanted the pain to go away,” she said.

Brittney Smith, an artist living in Colorado Springs, also contemplated suicide.

“I can’t look at myself in the mirror and know who I am anymore. I used to be so many things. That person, who I was before, died,” she said.

Both women reported being sexually assaulted to police.  Both said they felt doubted and dismissed, as their cases languished or were dropped. Both women spiraled into despair.

“My experience in reporting is the single most traumatic thing I’ve ever been through — even worse than the assault,” said Natalie, now 40 and living in Northglenn. She asked that her last name not be used to protect her family’s privacy.

Victims of sexual assault are at high risk for post-traumatic stress disorder, both in the immediate aftermath of the attack and sometimes recurring months or years later, according to multiple studies on the psychological toll of rape.

One-third will either consider suicide or attempt it. And they are five times more likely to abuse prescription drugs and 10 times more likely to use hard drugs, according to the research.

All of that is worsened if they feel blamed or disbelieved, said Elizabeth Newman, director of public policy for the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the state’s largest coalition and advocacy group to prevent sexual violence.

“It can be really hard to separate the emotional and mental impact of the actual sexual assault from the response that follows,” she said.

It presents a paradox for those in the advocacy world, Newman said. On the one hand, she said it is important for victims to report crimes to help get potential attackers off the street. But on the other, Newman said, there is a steep toll to their emotional well-being if cases go nowhere and they feel abandoned.

A Denver Gazette investigation found that, in the past decade, out of 10 reported rapes across Colorado, only one resulted in an arrest, based on an analysis of Colorado Bureau of Investigation crime statistics.

This story outlines the struggles of two women who shared their experience with The Denver Gazette. Police and prosecutors involved in their cases were also contacted for comment.

Smith, now 23, said she was raped and possibly drugged on March 1, 2024, by a man she had met casually. He had offered to help her move into an apartment in Denver and then she went with him to meet friends and go dancing. 

Although she had several drinks that night, she said she was not drunk. The man pressured her into taking the shot of liquor he handed her, she said. Soon after, she mostly blacked out.

She remembers being in the parking lot. She remembers falling down the stairs to her apartment. She remembers him watching her as she collapsed on her bed, unable to move her body or even lift her head.

He forced oral sex and then intercourse, she said.

“I remember saying no and then I passed out,” she said.

Afterwards, she was so motionless he seemed alarmed and shook her, asking if she was OK, she said. Then he left.

The Denver police detective who interviewed her seemed uninterested and thought the case was probably unprovable, she said. He wanted her to call the suspect on a recorded line and get him to confess, but the man never picked up. She said she was told that without a confession there wasn’t much they could do.

Smith said police had the man’s name, photo, where he worked and license plate number.

She also gave them the name of a friend who said the suspect had been sexually aggressive with her. That friend, who was interviewed by The Denver Gazette but asked not to be named, said she posted a warning on the Facebook page “Are We Dating the Same Guy” and got multiple responses from other women who said they had similar experiences. The post is no longer available.

At the time, Smith said that she gave police the information about the Facebook posts, thinking it might show a pattern. She said she was told, “We can’t do anything with that.”

That was nearly two years ago.

There has been no arrest, nor has the suspect been questioned, as far as she knows. She said police told her they couldn’t find him.

Recently, her rape kit came back showing his DNA present, she said she was told by police. It was matched to DNA already in the system, although she said she has no further details.

The only reason she reported, she said, was to potentially protect others.

The Denver police declined to comment on the case.

In Natalie’s case, she went to Loveland police in 2018 and said she had been sexually assaulted four times with increasing violence by a company supervisor when she worked in that city.

It happened, she said, two years prior but she waited to report until she no longer worked there out of fear of retaliation.

She didn’t fight back during the attacks — twice in his car and twice in the office — because “my instinct was to freeze,” she said, adding he would choke her and demand she call him “sir.”

The detective was dubious, she said, asking why she waited so long to report. He wanted her to call the suspect to get a confession. It triggered her anxiety, but she tried five times anyway. The man never answered.

The detective, she said, wanted her to show him where the first assault in the car occurred. She got confused about the location. He started telling her about accusers making up false allegations, she said.

She said she gave the detective the name of the suspect’s ex-girlfriend. She said the woman told her he had done the same thing to her and was willing to talk to the police.

It is unclear whether the detective called her.

After police questioned the suspect, Natalie said the detective said he no longer believed her. He also told her she should “see what real suffering looks like,” she said.

The case was forwarded to the Larimer County District Attorney, who declined to proceed because it would be too hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, a district attorney spokesperson told The Denver Gazette.

“Law enforcement can turn over every stone in an investigation, we can believe a victim, and that burden may still be too high given all the evidence available,” the spokesperson said in an email, adding that the decision predated the current district attorney.

Loveland police, in an email to The Denver Gazette, said based on its review of the case “no information suggests the detective involved operated outside of protocol.”

“Regarding the victim’s expressed feelings of disbelief or intimidation, those reflect her personal perspective. We cannot speak on her behalf. From the material reviewed though, no deviation from protocol appears evident,” the spokesperson’s email said.

After Natalie swallowed the pills that morning in 2018, she panicked and called 911, realizing she didn’t want to leave her son. She was taken to the hospital and then involuntarily committed to a mental health facility for two days. Once released she underwent extensive out-patient treatment.

Still, she suffered for years with depression. She worries about the impact to her son, now 12.

“Mommy is not upset with you,” she remembers telling him when he was little. “I just can’t get out of bed.”

She wonders if the cost of reporting is too high.

“We build these ideas of how our society is supposed to work, that we can trust the system,” she said. “The message I got was I didn’t matter. I guess I wasn’t the right kind of victim.”