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Only On 2: CBS2 Investigation Into Alleged Rape Of A Teenage Girl Raises Serious Questions

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com)   –  A high school teenager talked to CBS2 about an alleged rape that happened to her during school hours.

And she told CBS2's Randy Paige her ordeal didn't end there.

It's a story that is Only On 2.

"I felt like I couldn't defend myself," she said, "He shoved me into the bathroom stall and I was pushed against the wall,"

The attack happened in the middle of the day. She said two football players assaulted her.

"I just felt like I had no way to defend myself. I felt so weak cause he was so strong. And there's two of them and just one of me.

She said they took turns.

"And it's like, if I was to knock one of them down, the other one would still get me," she says.

She asked not to have her face shown but she wanted to tell her story.

"I just felt so violated," she added. "I just felt weak."

It was then Paige says the young woman decided to step out from the shadows. She not only decided to show her face, she also said to use her name.

Lexi Oppelt is a senior at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Riverside County.

The reason she decided to show her face and use her name? To tell other girls who may have gone through the same thing "not to be scared."

Lexi said she was 14, a freshman at the same school, in September 2013.

According to a lawsuit filed by her parents against the school district, she was "suddenly forced into the handicapped stall. There, both assailants took turns."

She names her alleged assailants. "I couldn't defend myself when the attack was happening. I wish I could go back and defend myself."

Lexi says the student who led the rape is Kenechukwu Ugwueze, known as K.C., a football player at her school at the time.

She says that when she told Sheriff's investigators and school officials what happened to her, and identified the football player as one of her attackers they had a puzzling reaction.

She says they both told her "she wanted it" and "it was like they didn't even care."

Less than two weeks later, though, the story would take a dramatic turn.

Paige says the Corona-Norco Unified School District issued the following statement which says, "Law enforcement concluded that no criminal activity ever occurred." They added, "Based on the investigation, the allegations are both false and unfounded."

But Sgt. Chris Durham at the Riverside County Sheriff's Department told Paige after detectives completed their investigation they turned the case over to the D.A.'s office for prosecution. The D.A's office said they can't comment because K.C. was a juvenile at the time.

The story does not end there.

Nine days after she said she was raped, Riverside County authorities said a different freshmen female was raped in a bathroom at the same school. Two boys were arrested and charged with rape -- one of them was a football player.

The boys were not publicly identified and the outcome of their case was not released because they were juveniles.

Lexi said K.C. was one of the boys who was arrested, the same football player who led the assault against her nine days prior.

In 2016, Paige said K.C Ugwueze has been charged as an adult with four rapes involving different victims, two involving 18-year-old women in Santa Barbara. Two other cases reportedly involved two underage girls in Riverside County.

Prosecutors allege K.C. committed the most recent rape in Riverside while he was out on bail awaiting trial in Santa Barbara.

As for Lexi's case, the district filed in response to her parents' lawsuit, "The 14-year-old freshmen girl failed to exercise care for her own safety" and said "she freely and voluntarily exposed herself to all risks of harm."

"That's absurd," said USC Professor of Clinincal Pediatrics Dr. Astrid Heger, "You don't go out willingly and say I'm hoping to get raped today."

Heger is one of the country's leading experts in the area of sexual abuse of children. She says she believes Lexi's story because it is so consistent with the reaction many rape victims have had that she has treated over her long career.

"They should have believed her and they should have done everything they possibly could to make her heal," says Heger, "I mean, the crime in and of itself is deadly and impacts you forever. It's the moral indifference of the people that surround you, that really makes it worse. It's as bad as the event itself."

Lexi told Paige she turned to art to deal with her pain. This following a period of time when she started believing the horrible things people were saying about her.

"I guess the blue represents how our eyes are hidden," she says, acknowledging that she still has nightmares and sleepless nights.

She often feels watched. And says trying to put the past behind her is not easy, but she's making the effort.

Her simple dream?

"I don't know, to be happy again?," she says.

Paige said Lexi is well on the way to healing. She recently got a tattoo on her wrist and it says, "Survivor."

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