Dirty details</p>
<p>Roethlisberger’s troubles began March 4 after he traveled the 30 miles from his lakeside mansion in the ritzy Great Waters section of Putnam County to Milledgeville.</p>
<p>According to the report filed by Milledgeville police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Roethlisberger’s “Benapalooza” entourage of as many as 10 men descended in two vehicles on the Velvet Elvis bar around 10:30 p.m. They had come to celebrate the quarterback’s 28th birthday, Bright said.</p>
<p>That’s where he met the 20-year-old student who four hours later would accuse him of raping her in the staff restroom flanking the VIP room of the Capital City nightclub.</p>
<p>Bright said a pin worn by the woman that might signal a willingness to engage in sexual intercourse piqued Roethlisberger’s interest and triggered conversations – “some of a sexual nature” - throughout the evening.</p>
<p>After midnight, the two parties met up at the Capital City. The district attorney said Roethlisberger’s two burly bodyguards, off-duty Pennsylvania State Trooper Ed Joyner and Coraopolis police Officer Tony Barravecchio, admitted the accuser and other young women into the VIP room but barred any men not part of Roethlisberger’s entourage.</p>
<p>With a barmaid plopping shots of liquor before Roethlisberger, his buddies and the women, by the early hours of March 5 the young accuser was “highly intoxicated,” according to Bright, who will not charge Roethlisberger with giving underage drinkers the booze.</p>
<p>Bright said one of Roethlisberger’s bodyguards guided the young woman down a narrow hallway into the staff restroom, perhaps because she felt ill, and the quarterback followed her. No security cameras or witnesses were able to detail what happened in there.</p>
<p>Bright said details remain “foggy” because of conflicting stories about what transpired.</p>
<p>Bright said one of the accuser’s sorority sisters and another friend who had been ejected from the VIP room – perhaps at Roethlisberger’s insistence – told the bar’s manager and the quarterback’s bodyguards that their friend was too drunk to be left alone with him.</p>
<p>But none of Roethlisberger’s party told authorities that anything sexual happened between the quarterback and his accuser, and the tavern manager informed the young women that they could “check on her” by going through a downstairs hallway, which they didn’t do, according to Bright.</p>
<p>Friends discovered the young woman about a block away from the Capital City about 2:30 a.m., shortly after the downtown taverns began closing. They flagged down a Milledgeville officer, and the investigation began.</p>
<p>Bright said the intoxicated woman initially told authorities that no rape had occurred. But about 13 hours later, she told investigators Roethlisberger had sexually assaulted her.</p>
<p>In his brief statement to Milledgeville investigators before invoking his right to seek legal counsel, Roethlisberger said the woman might have fallen and hurt her head.</p>
<p>An Oconee Regional Medical Center emergency room doctor and two nurses determined there was “a superficial laceration and bruising and slight bleeding in the genital area,” but that everything was “normal,” according to Bright. The physician could not spot a head injury or deduce if there was “any kind of trauma or sexual assault.”</p>
<p>Bright said the rape kit collected from the young accuser “found no evidence of semen or discharge.” Initial testing by Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab analysts in Atlanta found that “human male DNA” was present, but additional tests “would not yield a profile” that could be compared to Roethlisberger and the collected material was “so minute” that further analysis would be “futile,” according to Bright.