Daisy Coleman's mother says she killed herself as she couldn't have children because of rape she suffered at 14
Daisy Coleman, whose allegation of sexual assault and ensuing harassment was chronicled in 2016 Netflix documentary ‘Audrie and Daisy’, died by suicide on August 4 at the age of 23. Coleman’s mother has now reportedly revealed that her daughter killed herself shortly after learning she couldn't have children. She said that it was likely she couldn't conceive because of the rape she suffered as a teenager.
Melinda Coleman told The Sun that her daughter had been told by doctors weeks before her death that she would never be able to conceive. She also claimed that her daughter had a stalker who had been harassing her by text since December 2019. Coleman, according to her, had even filed a police report just hours before she died.
“It was two weeks ago, it feels like it's been a really long time, and like it's been no time at all if that makes sense,” Melinda told The Sun. “She was my best friend, and she would say the same, we talked every day. We were really close. I really thought we were past this [her feeling suicidal], in my heart, but then she got hit with a lot of stuff recently. She just found out weeks before that she couldn't have children. She was very upset about that.”
She said doctors placed the blame on her “brutal” rape when she was a 14-year-old. “That just shows how brutal it was, and they were trying to say it was consensual, that's what really gets me.”
Melinda said that Coleman had, before her death, been concentrating on releasing music and on her follow-up documentary ‘Saving Daisy’. But she was also, in recent weeks, being harassed by a stalker. She claimed that the stalker showed up to her house a day before she died. She added, however, that they had been texting for months. “She told me that he kept saying he was going to take her to Miami and put her into sexual slavery. And she said she'd rather die than that. I kept saying, ‘Then Daisy, let me come get you’, but I don't know, I look back at it, it was so confusing,” she said.
“She called me, she was hysterical, whoever this was was locking and unlocking the door from the outside,” she said of the day the person allegedly showed up at her door. “They were running their nails down the door. I told her to put the sofa against the door and keep the dog out and that would protect her. She was afraid to call the police because she said it was bad in Denver with the rioting and stuff and she didn't want to call over something like that.”
She said that police carried out a welfare check on Daisy the day she died, and she even filed a police report about the stalker. “She wasn't in her right mind. I was basically begging her to stay with me,” Melinda said. Later that day, Melinda was reportedly forced to call for a second welfare check on her daughter when she shot herself while speaking to her boyfriend.
Melinda revealed that Daisy had also been struggling to cope with the deaths of her dad and brother in the lead up to her suicide. Last year, her younger brother died in a car accident. Several years ago, her father Dr. Michael Coleman was killed in a car crash. “It'd been three years since she had been bad where I had to watch her all the time,' Melinda said. “Before, I literally made her sleep with me. I didn't let her close the bathroom door for a long time. But last week, all the stuff going on with the rallies, she was late getting to the psychiatrist and they wouldn't see her. She called me from there crying saying, ‘I really needed to see her today and she won't see me’.”
“One of the last things she said to me was, ‘I just want you to be proud of me’ I was always proud of her,” said Melinda.
Coleman's death took place eight years after she accused a high school classmate of sexual assault when she was 14 in her hometown of Maryville, Missouri. The student, Matthew Barnett, was arrested and charged with sexual assault. The assault charge was dropped two months later as the Nodaway County Prosecuting Attorney said there was insufficient evidence. Barnett's attorney said that his client cooperated with authorities and argued the sex was consensual.