At age 18, after being raped on a date with a fellow student at the College of William and Mary, Katie Koestner spoke out nationally and publicly, breaking a long national silence on the most under-reported crime in America. She appeared on the cover of TIME magazine’s date rape issue, giving a name and a face to a crime that is recognized as a critical problem currently facing America’s students.

Katie’s assault, quickly followed by the William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson cases, helped bring the contemporary debate over date rape into the national spotlight. Ms. Koestner has appeared on Oprah, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, CNN, MTV, Larry King Live, CNBC Talk Live, MSNBC, Later Today, Entertainment Tonight, Italian TV and dozens of other news programs in order to create public awareness of date rape. Articles about Katie have been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Journal of Higher Education, and hundreds of other publications.

HBO chose Katie as the subject of its Lifestories Docudrama, “No Visible Bruises: The Katie Koestner Story.” In 2002, Katie worked with MIT to create “LifeLessons: Sexual Assault 101," an interactive CD ROM for high school and college students. In 2003, she completed two films with national award-winning Top Hat Productions: “Please Write Back: Sexual Assault among America’s Students” and “Helping a Sexual Assault Survivor.”

Katie earned degrees in Public Policy and Women’s Studies, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the College of William and Mary. Since her graduation, Katie has presented in front of hundreds of thousands of students for over a thousand different colleges, high schools, military institutions, youth groups and service organizations throughout North America. Her annual clients include MIT, West Point, the US Naval Academy, Amherst College, Williams College and The Lawrenceville School, among many other top universities and high schools.

Over the past decade, Katie has also been the featured speaker at dozens of Fraternity, Sorority, Residence Life, Student Activities and College Health conferences around the country. In 1996, she was part of a Department of Education initiative to reach both urban students and prison populations, joining fellow presenters Tipper Gore and Bonnie Campbell. Ms. Koestner has keynoted the conferences for many state coalitions against sexual assault. She has given addresses at the International Conference on Sexual Assault. She has also presented at the annual conferences for the National Association for Independent Schools, the National School Boards Association, the American Association of School Administrators, and the American College Personnel Association. In 2004, Katie keynoted the Sexual Misconduct Symposium for Independent Schools.

Katie is a VAASA trained sexual assault peer counselor. At Cornell University, she founded Students Helping Others to Understand Trauma (SHOUT). Ms. Koestner is the co-author of two books: Sexual Assault on Campus: What Every College Needs to Know about Protecting Victims, Providing for Just Adjudication, and Complying with Federal Laws (1995), a guidebook on model campus sexual assault policies; and Total Sexual Assault Risk Management Strategies for Colleges (1998). She also contributed to Just Sex, an anthology on the history of the anti-sexual violence movement.

Since she began working as a rape awareness educator, Katie has kept a daily journal of her visits to schools. This journal will be the basis of a book that gives a sweeping first-hand account of the realities of sexual assault for students in America. Since founding Campus Outreach Services, Inc., she has dedicated the organization to fighting sexual assault in every possible way. She has taken her efforts to one more level in 2001 with the creation of TKKI: The Katie Koestner Initiative for a World Without Rape, a national charity involved with raising funds for Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Programs, Physical Evidence Recovery Kits, and other projects designed to achieve a world without rape. The most significant development for TKKI has been the formation and spread of “The I (nitiative) Club,” a national high school peer education program on respectful relationships.

Back to Top