She was beaten, raped and left to die in the Tri-Cities. Now, she’s fighting back for others

Dana Widrig is the victim of a violent beating and rape, but she also is a survivor.

Like many women, men and children who have been sexually assaulted, the Richland native knows it often is viewed as a taboo topic.

It is uncomfortable for the victims to talk about something so personal and raw, and the details can leave many squeamish.

Yet, Widrig did nothing wrong. She knows she shouldn’t be ashamed or humiliated.

All that should be on the man who got into her apartment in December 2009. He is responsible for the 43 staples in her head, her crushed arms, hands and wrists, her post-traumatic stress disorder and even her newfound sense of vigilance.

Widrig, 58, has joined the growing wave of survivors trying to overcome the stigma of sexual violence.

The first step to solving a problem is recognizing we have one, she said, and society still doesn’t allow people to come out of the shadows.

“My basic goal is to make it OK to share these stories in public. It’s not OK right now. People feel ashamed and nervous. .... They don’t feel they can share because they’re terrified,” Widrig told the Herald. “If I can speak about my story, which I can, then I’m going to do it because I feel a great responsibility to do what I can to help victims.”

Birthday fundraiser on Facebook

Widrig shares her birthday month of April with Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

So, for the second year, she organized an annual birthday fundraiser to benefit the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, which is based in Renton.

“It’s the best thing I ever did for myself,” she said.

Her fundraiser on a public Facebook page raised $1,501 last year — triple her goal of $500.

This year, as of Tuesday evening the site had raised about $3,100, and she’s hoping for more by the time it closes Wednesday’s night.

The Facebook fundraiser page has gathered support from Tri-Citians like Benton County Prosecutor Andy Miller and Chief Deputy Prosecutor Terry Bloor, who handled Widrig’s case, civil attorneys Jay Flynn and Kristi McKennon, Richland’s Interim Police Chief Jeff Taylor and former state Rep. Larry Haler.

‘Shame on him’

Widrig, who now lives in Seattle, has put everything out there.

She has opened “the box” from her tragedy and exposed her vulnerabilities, and found that her story resonates with so many others.

She also discovered she has the power to affect change. She was the driving force behind legislation in 2013 that changed the state’s Landlord-Tenant Act and the way duplicate apartment keys are secured.

“I really, truly, strongly believe if I can share my story, then possibly others can see it’s OK,” she said. “There’s such shame surrounding it still.”

Widrig said people have been so bold as to tell her she did some things that might have brought on the assault, like living in a corner apartment or on the fourth floor of her complex.

“Maybe they just don’t understand or are not putting themselves in another person’s shoes. That doesn’t matter. No one, NO ONE should assault somebody. There is no reason,” Widrig said. “I’d like to see the shame go where it’s supposed to go, and that is on the people who do this.”

“I’m not ashamed. Shame on him. ... Whatever I did that day, or previously, he never should have assaulted me. Period. Full stop,” she continued. “It’s like, people still have these ideas that are so outdated.”

Duplicate apartment key

In December 2009, Widrig had been living in The Villas at Meadow Springs in south Richland for two years when a maintenance worker entered her apartment just after 4 a.m.

Complex management kept the keys for all 286 apartments in a lock box, with the master key to that box in a coffee cup on top.

Cody J. Kloepper knew that and at some point he took the key for Widrig’s unit. He’d been in her apartment once to fix something, and Widrig only knew his first name.

She was awake making coffee when she “heard this rushing noise, footsteps coming towards me, and I turned around and saw him before he hit me in the head the first time.”

“That morning my life was taken away from me completely,” she said.

She fought back as he hit her on the face and head, over and over, probably close to 20 times with a metal bar. She put her arms up trying to protect herself and that’s how they ended up shattered.

She said Kloepper was trying to kill her, but she was determined to live. She didn’t want her parents to get that call.

Kloepper then raped her and placed a blanket over her body. She stayed still afterward, hoping he would think she was dead. She heard him at the kitchen sink, then he left.

Widrig recalls calling 911, talking to the dispatcher as she checked the apartment making sure he really was gone and the doors were locked.

Grief after sexual violence

After four days, she was released from a Spokane hospital with casts on her arms and staples in her head. She moved in with her parents.

Widrig learned there is a grief process that follows sexual violence. She was angry, then sad. Her feelings were all over the place.

“I didn’t know how to deal with it. It was all deep, deep grief,” she said. “I didn’t want to cry in front of other people. I didn’t want to share my story because I could see on the faces of other people that they were too traumatized to want to hear it, and that was OK.”

She returned to work about three weeks later, and soon found out that was too fast. She tried to move on with normal life, but so often found herself pulled back into the investigation or court proceedings, which lasted almost two years.

Widrig didn’t seek help from the Tri-Cities Support, Advocacy & Resource Center, or SARC, because she was afraid she’d run into someone she knew. At the time, she felt ashamed of being raped.

Privately forgives attacker

In that first week, Widrig said she forgave her attacker. She never told anyone that detail, wanting to keep it private.

It was important for her to do it immediately to put things into perspective, put it behind her and have his actions wiped from her mind for good.

“That private moment of forgiveness has rendered me immune to anything he does now,” she said. “His actions are his, and his alone. They are completely innocuous in my life.”

Widrig said she still doesn’t have any lingering anger toward Kloepper.

“He just has no relevance whatsoever. I have no feelings toward him. I rarely have thought about him just because of the fact I have no feelings, no hate, I have no nothing,” she said. “So when he appealed (his conviction), yeah that was annoying but that had nothing to do with me. Or it did phase me, but it was irrelevant to me.”

Learn to laugh at tough times

Kloepper was convicted by a Benton County Superior Court jury of first-degree assault, first-degree burglary and first-degree rape, all with a deadly weapon.

He is serving a mandatory minimum sentence of 24 1/2 years in Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Connell. He still says he’s innocent.

Through her years of counseling, Widrig said she has learned to laugh and not be so fearful.

“I ask God to help me because I don’t want to be in this prison of having to be afraid all my life. I’m not going to be that way,” she said. “I decided a long, long time ago that I would rather live than be scared. I’m not going to curl up in the corner and die, it’s not me.”

This story was originally published April 30, 2019 at 8:13 PM.