The woman who filed the civil complaint alleging that former NBA Most Valuable Player Derrick Rose and two of his friends drugged her, broke into her apartment and gang-raped her while she was unconscious in August 2013 spoke publicly this week for the first time, granting multiple interviews in an attempt to present her side of the story less than three weeks before the scheduled start of the civil trial on Oct. 4.

The woman previously identified in court documents only as “Jane Doe” is a 30-year-old college student who told Janie McCauley of The Associated Press that her family doesn’t know anything about her relationship to the former Chicago Bulls and current New York Knicks point guard, with whom she had what both sides acknowledge was a non-exclusive sexual relationship from late 2011 until July 2013, or the lawsuit, in which she is seeking $21.5 million in damages.

“They have a sense something’s wrong, but there’s no way I can express to them or explain to them how I feel or what I’m going through,” Doe told the AP. “Having to think of alternative ways to communicate that pain is very stressful and it takes a lot out of you.”

Doe’s anonymity has been a central element in what has become an increasingly contentious legal battle.

In May, Rose filed a motion calling for Jane Doe’s parents to be deposed so that his attorneys could “question the plaintiff’s parents about her ‘traditional, religious upbringing,’” and asking the court “to force Doe to reveal her identity,” claiming “she has waived her privacy rights by putting her emotional condition at issue.” Rose’s attorneys have also argued Doe’s “use of Twitter and other forms of social media” — including Instagram, where they say she posts photos “that are sexual in nature [where she is] dressed in provocative nature, is in sexually suggestive poses, and is in photographs indicating that she engages in sexually charged encounters with more than one man at a time” — “belies her apparent desire for anonymity.”

A judge found no compelling reason to publicly release the woman’s real name, meaning Rose’s defense will not be able to use her social media as evidence of her ‘sexual’ nature at trial, but did “allow the disclosure of her name within the realm of the discovery, or fact-finding, process” of the trial. Even so, the judge chastised Rose’s lawyers for the logic of the social-media claim:

In June, Rose’s lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment in the case, seeking its dismissal. A judge denied that motion in July due to substantial disagreements on the most important facts of the case between the versions forwarded by Doe and by Rose and his fellow defendants, Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton, who have repeatedly maintained their innocence during the pre-trial process.

“The record presents a genuine dispute of material fact as to the central issue in this action: whether Plaintiff consented to sexual intercourse with Defendants in early morning of August 27, 2013,” U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald wrote in his judgment. “Because the jury and not the Court must resolve this central issue, summary judgment is improper.”

From Lindsay Gibbs of ThinkProgress:

As a result, “the record is far too equivocal for this Court to rule in Defendant Rose’s favor as a matter of law,” Fitzgerald wrote. “There can be no doubt that genuine disputes exist as to almost every material fact in this action.”

In August, Rose’s attorneys again filed a memorandum asking that Doe not be allowed to use a pseudonym at trial, writing that no “media restrictions are warranted or necessary [to protect the alleged victim from potential abuse owed to her name becoming public], partly because the media has to some degree lost interest in the case.” Since, however, interest in the case has spiked, due in part to the publication of court documents including depositions in which Rose and Doe recount specific and explicit details of their sexual relationship, and due in part to tabloid stories featuring salacious headlines like “Derrick Rose Accuser Consented to Group Sex… Mad Over Sex Toy” and “Derrick Rose to Rape Accuser: You’re No Prude, You Hooked Up With Nick Young.” (Doe’s lawyers deny that claim about the Los Angeles Lakers guard, for the record.)

Doe decided to speak to the media this week in part because of such headlines, telling the AP she believes she has been unfairly painted as promiscuous rather than as someone who was intoxicated — according to court documents, Doe had drank vodka and an individual serving of wine on the way to Rose’s rental house in Beverley Hills, then tequila with her friend Jessica Groff once they got there, and was inebriated enough to begin picking up burning gemstones out of the fire pit, burning her hand — and the alleged victim of a sexual assault:

Rose’s attorneys have maintained in court filings that he and his friends had no idea Doe was severely drunk, that Doe let them into her apartment, that she was alert throughout the proceedings, and that the sex they had that evening was consensual. Doe disputes all of that, saying she remembers nothing and never gave consent.

Given that this is a rape trial, the question of consent looms large. During a wide-ranging phone interview with Gibbs of ThinkProgress, Doe’s lawyers, Brandon Anand and Waukeen McCoy, and Katherine Redmond Brown, founder of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, spoke about the perspective some athletes have on consent in general, and how Rose specifically responded to a question about consent during his deposition:

Here are Rose’s responses to questions during his June 17 deposition about whether he spoke with Allen and Hampton about why they were going to Doe’s apartment:

More details from Rose’s deposition on the consent issue were shared during a Thursday conference call that Doe and her representatives held with reporters:

In an interview with Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, Doe said she felt like there were two Derrick Roses — the shy, reserved one she’d see in private moments throughout their relationship, and one who act differently in the context of his friends:

In a troubling addendum to the sordid saga, according to Bondy, the Knicks and team president Phil Jackson were “aware” of the suit against Rose when they pulled the trigger on the trade to bring him to New York, but went ahead anyway, and without seeking the plaintiff’s side of the story:

One more “big word” in a case full of them, from Rose’s lawyers’ assessment of Doe’s civil filing as “pure and simple extortion by a plaintiff who wants to hide behind the cloak of anonymity while seeking millions in damages from a celebrity with whom she was in a long-term, nonexclusive consensual sexual relationship” to Doe’s lawyers’ criticism of Rose’s legal strategy as a needless “attack on Doe’s femininity, morals and character in order to perpetuate incorrect myths about sexual assault, labeling her as the ‘sexual aggressor.’” More “big words” could be coming, too.

Doe’s attorneys spoke with multiple outlets on Wednesday and Thursday about the rationale behind filing a civil suit rather than pursuing criminal charges. While there’s a six-year statute of limitations for criminal charges in a case of this nature, there’s only a two-year window for civil litigation; given the low criminal conviction rates in rape cases, allowing that window to close might have “meant that [Doe] would never receive any semblance of justice, Defendant Rose would never be held accountable, and other women would not be given encouragement to come forward,” Anand told Gibbs. (The standards at trial are different, too, with criminal cases requiring belief beyond a reasonable doubt and civil cases requiring a “preponderance of the evidence.”)

Pursuing a civil trial, though, doesn’t shut the door on a potential criminal case, and while a spokesperson for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office told the AP that no criminal charges have yet been filed and no evidence has been forwarded to the DA’s office for review and possible prosecution, Doe’s representatives suggested during Thursday’s call that the option remains open:

Other issues — like a potential suspension by the NBA should he lose at trial, possible complications with morals clauses in his 13-year, $185 million endorsement contract with Adidas, or just wanting to put this behind him before the start of his first season in New York and the final season of his current contract — could still spur Rose to settle the case out of court before the Oct. 4 trial date. (Daniel Werly of The White Bronco has more on those issues, and many, many others, involved in this case.) One legal analyst on Thursday’s call suggested that still might be the most likely outcome:

Whether that’s the way this plays out remains to be seen. Come what may, though, it sounds like Doe’s decision to speak out wasn’t arrived at lightly.

“I think people stay silent because they don’t want to have to deal with everyone finding out, like, hey, this happened to you, now I’m a victim, [cries], now I have to walk around with a ‘damaged’ label, being broken and this and that,” Doe told Gibbs. “You don’t want that. Who can deal with that on top of everything that happened?”

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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