1 year later, Beaufort County rape victim faces another uphill battle

In 2017, there were many memorable folks who shared their stories with The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette, and we wanted to catch up with some of them before the year’s end. Here is the sixth and final story in our “Where are they now?” series.

The doctors diagnosed her in July.

Stage 2 cervical cancer.

Surgery followed in August, then another procedure in October.

Later this month, doctors will perform a biopsy to determine if all of the cancer has been removed.

“They’re confident they got it all,” the 20-year-old said.

That’s, in part, because her cancer was caught fairly early on when doctors found some abnormal cells during a pap smear.

The typically standard procedure for women is one she says she did not routinely receive in recent years.

That changed the night of Dec. 6, 2016 — the night she says she was raped in Room 227 of Beaufort’s Howard Johnson Inn and crawled for her life through a nearby marsh to escape.

Later that evening, a nurse told her to get routinely tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

It’s something the nurse tells all rape victims — and an instruction that, in a small way, might have saved the young woman’s life.

Daryan Payne has seen the headlines.

First, Harvey Weinstein, and in the months since, wave after wave of accusations that have toppled the careers of men in media, Hollywood and politics.

Daryan said she is encouraged by the scores of sexual assault victims like herself coming forward, but at the same time, discouraged by the media’s focus on people of power.

“I went through something very real and very scary,” she said in a recent interview. “There needs to be more attention on normal, regular people.”

She approached a reporter with The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette shortly after her December 2016 attack.

Few sexual assault victims share their story so publicly. But to Daryan, she said it was important to bring attention to what rape survivors go through in the legal system.

Now, she is learning just how slowly the wheels of justice turn.

Her alleged rapist, Brian Walls, whom she said she had known for years, is still in jail, Beaufort County Detention Center records show.

Court records show Walls’ rape charge is still pending along with an unrelated murder charge stemming from a fire later determined to be arson that occurred the night after Daryan’s reported rape.

“It’s where most of cases of this age are,” said 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office spokesman Jeff Kidd when contacted recently. “We’re building our legal case.” He declined to comment further.

In June, Daryan returned to Beaufort Memorial Hospital to thank Ashley Hildreth — the hospital’s only trained sexual assault nurse examiner at the time of her reported attack — who helped her through the incredibly invasive procedure of a rape kit that night last December.

She asked the two women at the front desk if Hildreth was available.

Hildreth immediately recognized the woman standing in the hospital lobby that summer day as Daryan, her patient from more than six months ago.

She was surprised Daryan returned to issue a simple thank-you. It’s often too painful for rape victims to revisit.

“You’re there on the worst day of their lives,” Hildreth said. “It’s not a casual meeting at the post office.”

A rape kit typically takes at least four hours, sometimes more, she said.

The two hugged, then cried. The women at the front desk teared up, too.

A month later, the cancer diagnosis came, derailing Daryan’s education. She had wanted to return to school, get her GED, then perhaps pursue a nursing degree.

After two surgeries and what she hopes will be a clean biopsy, the young woman who can’t seem to catch a break has a revised plan.

Daryan said she will return to school in January and work her way toward becoming a sexual assault nurse examiner.

Just like Hildreth.

Daryan moved out of Beaufort County three days after she reported to Beaufort police that she had been raped.

She now takes self-defense classes and owns a gun.

She forces herself to go out in public alone at least once a week, but it’s still hard. In November, while picking up a medical prescription, she said she had an anxiety attack and immediately left the store.

She said she visits her therapist, her psychiatrist and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) specialist each week to work through issues stemming from her sexual assault.

She lives with her boyfriend and her 2-year-old son, Brantly, in an apartment. They are saving up to buy a home.

She has visited the Beaufort area just a handful of times. When she does, she said she fears she may be found by the others who were in the hotel room at the time of the attack.

She has new friends, but asks them not to tag her on social media in a way that will reveal where she is now living.

“I really feel like I’m in hiding,” she said. “I have a backup plan in place in case they find out where I am now.”

A week before the one-year anniversary of her rape, Daryan went to Wal-Mart by herself.

She didn’t shop for groceries or roam the aisles, instead buying just one item: a package of hair dye in the darkest color she could find, practically a jet black.

“I feel like I needed to be the opposite of what I was,” she said.

She’d never dyed her hair before, had been a blonde all of her life. Carefully following the instructions on the box, she let the dye sit for 40 minutes, then rinsed it out.

Combing through her hair with her fingers, she looked into the mirror and — barely recognizing the person who stared back at her in the bathroom mirror — smiled.

“I don’t think I’ll ever go back.”

This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 6:00 AM with the headline "1 year later, Beaufort County rape victim faces another uphill battle."