SARATOGA -- When Audrie Pott woke up in her friend's house the morning of Sept. 2, after an apparent night of heavy drinking, she found herself undressed and her body covered in marker-drawn scrawlings of sexually explicit messages, several of her fellow teen partygoers told investigators.

There were also murmurs that three of her male friends sexually assaulted and photographed her as she lay passed out in a bedroom, murmurs that grew into a week's worth of rumors, alleged bullying and humiliation that family members say drove the 15-year-old to hang herself in her mother's Los Altos home.

Some of the markings allegedly written on Audrie's body -- including drawings and sexually charged words -- were intended to mark the suspects' presence, investigators and the Pott family lawyer attest.

"They left her a message," attorney Robert Allard said.

Police reports obtained by the Mercury News reveal a picture of a booze-soaked high-school party at the home of Audrie's friend, whose parents were away for the weekend, and the subsequent interviews with underage members of the Saratoga party.

Three of Audrie's classmates were arrested Thursday in connection with the assault and the subsequent sharing of images, which touched off a national media firestorm given it surfaced in the wake of similar high-profile sexual assault cases in Ohio and Nova Scotia.

One of the suspects claims the other two may have sexually assaulted her while they were drawing on her, but nothing in the police report alleges that sexual intercourse occurred.


Audrie, whose identity was publicly released by her family partly in the hope of spurring a landmark anti-bullying law, was at the Saratoga house party with 10 other youths and was visibly drunk, according to a report encompassing evidence seizures and interviews of several of the nearly one-dozen partygoers by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office.

The document says Sheriff's detectives seized several cellphones, laptop computers and peripherals, and other electronic items belonging to the teen suspects.

Also in the report, the suspects admitted during the initial investigation that they also drank at the party, which contradicts a statement made by Allard during a Monday morning press conference.

Several witnesses described beer being at the party, and the sight of an empty bottle of vodka on a counter.

The level of intoxication Audrie exhibited in the report suggests that she would have been unable to consent to any sexual activity.

"Pott was in the kitchen and she was falling over and tripping," according to an account by one attendee given to sheriff's investigators.

Another told the detectives that the victim "was stumbling around and would be probably not be able to answer simple questions."


"Pott was scared because someone had put her in a room and took off her clothes, leaving her underwear on," a witness reported.

She turned to her friends for answers.

"Pott had asked several people, via Facebook Messenger, why she had woken up with her pants off," the report states.

Other witnesses told investigators that one of Audrie's friends and the three juvenile suspects -- who she had considered to be her friends -- brought the victim to an upstairs bedroom, presumably so she could fall asleep there.

Instead, the report alleges, the three suspects stayed behind in the room proceeded to draw on the passed-out Audrie, pulling off her shorts and in some accounts partially removing her bra, exposing her breasts. The markings were reportedly on her chest, legs, back and near her genitalia.


Another friend admitted to walking in on them but denied actually seeing the drawing or the assault. A girl who went into the room later and found the disheveled victim and placed a blanket on her.


One suspect was arrested and cited for sexual battery related to the drawings near the victim's intimate areas, and was released to his parents.


"It also seemed as if she was trying to cover up for someone to prevent them from getting in trouble," an investigator wrote about one student in the report.

"We told her the importance of telling the truth not only to find out if a criminal act had occurred," the report states, "but to give a sense of closure to (Audrie's) family."
