A former IU employee was arrested at his apartment Monday after allegedly binding a woman with duct tape and raping her.
Originally, police received a call from the woman’s coworker Nov. 30 saying her friend had called her and was lost downtown. Her roommate told police she had not spoken to the woman, but she was supposed to be staying downtown with a friend. Bloomington Police Department officers were sent out to look for her, Capt. Steve Kellams said.
While looking for the woman, a clerk at the Village Pantry on East Winslow Road called officers saying they had seen a woman walking around with a blue sweatshirt and no pants. Police eventually found her on North Sixth Street only wearing a sweatshirt, Kellams said.
The woman was apprehensive when talking to officers and repeatedly said she just wanted to go home. Officers drove the woman home and encouraged her to go to the hospital and take a rape kit, which she did later in the day, Kellams said.
The woman filed a report Dec. 2, telling officers she and her coworkers went out Nov. 29. The group went to multiple bars while drinking together, until she began talking to Gregory Danielson, 22, at Brothers Bar and Grill, she told police.
Danielson and the woman knew each other, but she told officers they were not close friends. After the two began talking at Brothers, her memory begins to get hazy. The next thing she remembers is waking up in Danielson’s apartment the same night and feeling very sick.
The woman told police she remembers being naked in bed with Danielson, who was raping her. Her hands and feet were bound with duct tape. She told police she tried to yell, but her mouth was taped over too.
Police said after Danielson was finished, he took off the tape and told her go to sleep. She laid in bed with him, pretending to sleep and closing her eyes until he was asleep. Kellams said she then grabbed only her blue sweatshirt and ran out the door, leaving her other belongings behind.
The woman told police she borrowed a stranger’s cell phone, using it to make a call to her friend around 4:45 a.m.
Police said her friends took her to the hospital that morning.
Danielson was contacted by police and came into the station for an interview, where he told officers he was kissing the woman at Brothers when he said he had to leave because work was early in the morning. The woman said she wanted to go back too, Danielson said, and he ordered an Uber to his apartment.
Once at the apartment, Danielson claims the woman threw up and showered. Danielson told officers he fell asleep, and when he woke up, the woman was gone and they did not have sex.
Detectives searched Danielson’s apartment at 2786 South Walnut Street Pike after the interview and found rolls of duct tape by the bed and torn pieces in the trash can, Kellams said. Danielson told officers he had used the tape to tie women up in the past, but not with the victim.
However, police said Danielson began changing his story once presented with evidence, saying they had consensual sex, and she had agreed to be tied up.
Based on the evidence and his changing story, police arrested Danielson in his apartment. He is facing one charge of rape.
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Danielson was an IU student. Danielson is a former IU employee and was enrolled in classes for the spring 2019 semester. The IDS regrets this error.
