The two 15-year-old girls and four boys 17 and 18 involved attended Mount Rainier High School in Des Moines. They were attending a DECA conference in downtown Seattle in October.
Four Mount Rainier High School students have been charged in connection with the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl during an overnight school field trip in Seattle last October.
Keegan J. Tarabochia, aka Keegan Piper, and Donnie Ray Moore, both 18, and two other students not named because they are in juvenile court, were charged this week with third-degree rape and supplying liquor to a minor, according to the King County Prosecutor’s Office. One of the unnamed suspects is 17; the other turned 18 a few days after charges were filed.
Third-degree rape is defined as non-consensual sex in which the lack of consent was “clearly expressed by the victim’s words or conduct,” according to state law.
The students involved were on a chaperoned, three-day trip to a DECA conference for business-oriented students at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel Oct. 25-27. All of them knew each other but weren’t in the same social circles at the Des Moines school, court documents say.
According to charging documents, the four seniors invited two girls to their hotel room the night of Oct. 26 and gave them shots of vodka and whiskey. The two girls both reported feeling “totally out of it” soon afterward and were unable to walk, documents say. The seniors then told them to lie down on a bed.
Both girls fell asleep, and when they woke up, the four males were kissing and touching them, the documents say. One girl reported that three of the males “cycled through me” as they had sex with her, according to the charges. She repeatedly said no, the charges allege. The four seniors are charged with raping her.
The other girl said two of the males had sex with her, and she “felt like she had to go along with the boys and she believed that they would have sex with her even if she said no,” according to charging documents. She is not listed in rape charges.
The girls were taken back to their rooms the next morning and attended the DECA sessions. The girls said Tarabochia told them not to tell anyone what happened, according to charging documents.
Both girls reported the incident to relatives the day they returned home from the trip, Oct. 27, and went to a hospital that evening, according to charging documents. The incident was then reported to police.
When school staff interviewed three of the males, Tarabochia reportedly said he had sex with one of the girls, but it was consensual, and Moore said two others had consensual sex with the girls, but he didn’t, charging papers say. The third suspect said he and the others all had sex with the girls. All four declined to be interviewed by law enforcement, and three have attorneys.
Officials at Highline Public Schools, in South King County, learned of the allegations shortly after the incident and worked with police on the investigation, spokeswoman Catherine Carbone Rogers said Friday afternoon. She would not say whether the four seniors had been suspended from the Des Moines school, or if the two girls still attend.