How One Phone Call Resulted In Charges Initially Being Dropped Against A College Rapist

A day after then 19-year-old University of Minnesota junior Abby Honold was brutally raped in 2014 by fellow student Daniel Drill-Mellum, she received a message on social media asking her to call a friend of his to discuss the event. Unknown to Abby at the time, two of Drill-Mellum’s friends recorded the call.

In the video above, Abby tells Dr. Phil that the case against Drill-Mellum was temporarily derailed when Minneapolis police dropped the charges against him after hearing the recording.

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“I received a phone call from the detective telling me that they were dropping charges because I had admitted that it was consensual,” Abby says she was baffled. “I thought they must have edited it in some way - they must have doctored it – I thought: ‘I would have never said that.’”

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How did a police officer for the University of Minnesota become involved in the investigation of an off-campus sexual assault after Minneapolis police dropped it? And just how many more women does Abby say have come forward with claims that they too, were attacked by Drill-Mellum?

Watch more from this episode of Dr. Phil here.