2 Rape Charges, 1 Day in Jail for Frat Boy from Illinois

One woman suffered a laceration to her genitals after 24 minutes alone with John Enochs in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house at Indiana University.

That was in April 2015, when the finance major from Downers Grove accompanied the young woman into a room during a frat party. Security video shows the two going into the room together. She says she told Enochs to stop, but he held her down and forced her into sex, according to prosecutors in Monroe County, Indiana.

In the course of investigating that behavior, prosecutors learned about another woman on campus who claimed Enochs sexually assaulted her in 2013. She didn't report the incident at the time, which took place in her sorority house, but she agreed to press charges after learning about the second woman's allegations.

Enochs, 22, was charged with two felony counts of rape.

Last week, Enochs entered into a plea deal that gets him one year of probation in exchange for pleading guilty to a charge of battery with moderate bodily injury. The rape charges were dismissed.

When he entered his guilty plea, Enochs was agreeing to a felony charge of battery with moderate injury, but Judge Marc Kellams reduced the charge to a misdemeanor.

Enochs spent just one day in jail.

What happened? Prosecutors say their case fell apart as further investigation unfolded and they did the best they could to hold Enochs accountable in some way.

"This turn of events was frustrating for us," the Monroe County prosecutor's office said in a statement.

On Monday, after a storm of criticism, Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Robert Miller issued a lengthy explanation about what happened to their case:

This case presented a very unusual set of circumstances in that we had two unrelated accusations, two years apart. That was an important consideration in our initial decision to charge. However, under the law, a jury considering one case would not be allowed to know about the other. After the case(s) was filed, evidence continued to be developed that lead us to the conclusion that neither case, standing alone, presented sufficient evidence to prove rape.

In the older case, the complaining witness had no specific recollection of the events; the few witnesses could not recall important details due to the passage of time and the consumption of alcohol; and the complaining witness’s decision to prosecute came two years after the event which severely hindered the investigation. There were also photographs that contradicted the assertion that the complaining witness was incapable of engaging in consensual activity shortly before the alleged assault. This is important because the complaint was that she was “unaware” that the sex was occurring due to her consumption of alcohol. Indiana law has a provision in the rape statute that makes this charge available to prosecutors.

The more recent case had similar evidentiary problems. In that case there is video evidence of activities of the complaining witness, before and after the alleged assault, which does not support the assertion of a forcible rape, which was the charge in this instance. There is also DNA evidence that is problematic, and made it impossible for us to prove that the defendant was the cause of her injury.

This turn of events was frustrating for us as prosecutors, due to the fact that there were two complaints against the defendant. That fact is the reason we continued to pursue accountability on his part which led to this plea agreement. It should be noted that he entered a plea of guilty to Battery as a Level 6 Felony. The decision to enter it as a misdemeanor was within the Court’s discretion.

In the criminal affidavit filed at the time of Enochs' arrest in September 2015, the first accuser said she did not know Enochs and had been drinking in the courtyard of the fraternity house, then went into the frat house to find a bathroom. Security-video footage showed Enochs leading her down a hallway to a door that was locked, then leading her to another room where the door opened.

After 24 minutes pass, the accuser is seen fleeing from that room.

The criminal affidavit, however, states that the accuser went into the bathroom with friends after the assault and told them she'd just been raped.

The Indiana Daily Student reports that additional video evidence obtained from the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house shows the accuser kissing another student after the alleged assault and then entering a bathroom in the company of other students, behavior which undercut the "forcible rape" claim.

The evidence in the 2013 case proved problematic for prosecutors because Instagram photos showed Enochs and the victim together, contradicting the woman's claim that inebriation made her incapable of engaging in any consensual activity. Also, a witness who claimed she saw Enochs and the accuser engaged in sexual activity could not be relied upon "because she did not actually see his penis enter her vagina," the Indiana Daily Student reported. The witness saw them through a window and ran into the house and tried to enter the room but the door was locked.

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Enochs' attorney, Katharine Liell, blames alcohol and says the young man is "profoundly sorry for his lack of judgment and has apologized for his conduct."

A 2012 graduate of Benet Academy in Lisle, he was a standout high school basketball player and member of the National Honor Society. Even without a double-rape felony conviction, he'll forever be known as a campus sex criminal.

On Monday, Liell also issued an explanation of the case, criticized the criminal investigation as unfair and said Enochs should never have been charged with rape:

As the Monroe County prosecutor's’ office has acknowledged through their voluntary dismissal of the rape charges, John Enochs did not rape anyone and he should never have been charged with these offenses.

Rather, due to the misconduct of the lead investigator who presented false and misleading evidence in her public probable cause affidavit—and failed to provide the Court with exculpatory evidence—John Enochs was charged with crimes he did not commit.

After John Enochs presented evidence to demonstrate his innocence of the sensationalized and false charges, the prosecutor’s office, on their own motion, dismissed both rape charges.

John Enochs did admit to conduct in one instance that the Court found to be a misdemeanor. He is profoundly sorry for his lack of judgment and has apologized for his conduct.

Issues of alcohol and sexual misconduct are serious issues on college campuses across the country, but such issues are trivialized when law enforcement misrepresents the true facts and fails to investigate the allegations fully and fairly.

At the time of his arrest, Liell told the Indianapolis Star: “I totally believe John has been caught up in a whirlwind of emotion surrounding any allegation involving sexual assault on campus."

Enochs' judge also went easy on him, reducing his charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. The judge, Kellams, on the bench since 1980, is also a deacon in the Indianapolis Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church.

The woman who alleges Enochs raped her in 2015 recently filed a Title IX federal lawsuit against Delta Tau Delta and Indiana University. She claims failure to acknowledge the 2013 assault led to her own assault, according to a Fox59 report.

The woman also claims IU allowed Delta Tau Delta to "foster an environment of underage drinking, illicit drug use and sexual assault."

Indiana University released this statement on Monday:

Indiana University is aware of the public attention over the court’s adjudication involving John Enochs, who is no longer a student at the university nor a graduate of IU, and has received a number of inquiries requesting comment on the case.

As result of the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), designed to protect the educational records of students, Indiana University is not able to publicly comment on individual student misconduct cases, including the final disposition of those cases. Additionally, it would be inappropriate for the university to comment on the outcome of a criminal judicial proceeding to which it is not a party.

Enochs, who hoped to double-major in finance and accounting at IU, is no longer a student there.