Almost 15 years after her daughter committed suicide, speaker Andrea Cooper urged a University of Wisconsin audience of more than 300 to speak out if they or someone they know is the victim of a sexual assault.

In the first few hours after the calendar flipped to 1996, Cooper and her husband Mike returned home to find the lifeless body of their 20-year-old daughter Kristin on the floor of their family room in Colorado.

Cooper said she first thought her daughter passed out from consuming too much alcohol, and it was not until she approached Kristin’s body that she saw the gun in Kristin’s hand.

“I knew that she had shot herself,” Cooper said. “I screamed to my husband…we were both just standing there shaking and shaking and sobbing hysterically.”

After the police arrived, Cooper said they investigated the scene for four hours. The police even took the notebook found by Kristin’s body and kept it for two weeks.

When her husband picked the notebook up two weeks later, Cooper said the contents devastated him.

Kristin began the journal when she started college, Cooper said. Kristin wrote about pledging Alpha Chi Omega. She wrote about her relationship with her boyfriend. She wrote about being raped.

The rape hurt Kristin, as evidenced by a poem she wrote, which Cooper recited from memory.

The most painful part for Cooper was reading about Kristin’s rape in the journal.

“I was crushed when I found out about it – that she didn’t tell me,” Cooper said. “We had a lot of talks about sex, we were very open.”

Kristin did not name her rapist, but Cooper took it upon herself to figure out who committed the crime. She called Kristin’s best friend in Littleton, Colo. only to find out she knew about the rape.

Kristin’s best friend at the Alpha Chi house knew too – in fact, the whole house knew. Even her ex-boyfriend knew, and broke up with her after she told him about it.

From what Cooper determined from Kristin’s friends, the man who raped her was one of her three closest male friends.

The rape, coupled with her boyfriend breaking up with her, sent Kristin into a severe depression which her sorority sisters saw her fall into, but from 10 hours away, Cooper did not.

Cooper said 90 percent of victims are raped by someone they know, someone they trust, and encouraged both the men and women in the audience to listen and reserve judgment if someone they know has been sexually assaulted.

She encouraged students to seek counseling and asked friends to tell someone if they know a friend is considering suicide.

Despite Kristin’s tragic story, Cooper said her main message when speaking to students is hope.

UW sophomore Kassie Cossette said Cooper’s presentation was not what she expected.

“I thought it was going to be kind of depressing, but it was really uplifting and I think she had a great message,” Cossette said.

Cooper started traveling around the country telling Kristin’s story in 1998 and was brought to UW through the joint efforts of UW’s Alpha Chi Omega and Delta Delta Delta chapters.