In memory of Dallas Stoller: Family, Bluffton friends want justice after SC student’s rape
Dallas Stoller and Alyson Hay didn’t need to exchange constant “I love you’s.”
Like most of the communication between the best friends who considered each other sisters, it was an unspoken given. Or as Alyson joked, a telepathic understanding.
Instead, when one bid the other farewell, they’d wave it off with a nonchalant “alright, bye” and pick up where they left off the next time they got together, whether it was in their Orangeburg County hometown or after class at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
On Nov. 12, something felt different. Alyson’s intuition was nagging.
She was used to worrying about Dallas, always wanting to fight her friend’s battles. It’d been that way for nearly a decade and had intensified over time.
More than three years had passed since Dallas accused Bowen Turner, an Orangeburg teen, of sexually assaulting her at a party in October 2018 in Bamberg County — a trauma with a harrowing aftermath that Dallas’ friends and family said stole her happy-go-lucky, heart-on-her-sleeve personality, replacing it with heavy darkness.
Bowen was arrested and charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in January 2019. He was not convicted. This April, the charge was dismissed, according to the Bamberg County Second Judicial Circuit Public Index.
That particular November morning in 2021, despite the 20-year-olds’ laughter and dancing the night before in Alyson’s new Pooler, Georgia, apartment, Alyson felt a pang in her stomach.
“I love you,” she told her best friend.
“I love you, too,” Dallas responded, getting into her car to make the drive back to her Bluffton apartment.
Dallas died by suicide two days later on Nov. 14.
“She tried as hard as she could,” said Brette Tabatabai, Dallas’ older sister. “I think she put a lot of pressure on herself to continue to be that same all-around great girl. For somebody who had the courage to stand up and do what she did, and then to get the backlash that she did, she just didn’t understand.”
From the nurse in the Orangeburg emergency room who talked Dallas out a SANE kit the first night to the Second Circuit Solicitor’s Office calling the family five months after her death to say it was dropping the case against Turner, the Stoller family said systems in place intended for protection had failed her. It is not clear what the office plans to do with the case moving forward.
Bowen’s attorney is state Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg. His father, who lives in Orangeburg, is an investigator for the First Circuit Solicitor’s Office. The Stoller family said the Second Circuit Solicitor’s Office does not answer their calls.
“You’re dealing with a system that has bred generations of women, and even men, to believe their story doesn’t matter, their voice doesn’t matter,” Brette said. “And people just remain silent. And so this just continues to happen and nobody stands up to this quote good ol’ boys system.”
But Dallas’ family and friends aren’t quitting. They’ve made endless calls to the solicitor’s office, launched social media campaigns, garnered over 15,000 signatures in a petition to reopen her case and, most recently, held a rally outside the South Carolina State House to raise awareness for victims’ rights.
Every victim deserves a voice, Brette said, and she’s not letting her sister go silent.
‘We just didn’t see it’
Bluffton was where Dallas could get away from the tight-knit Orangeburg community, it’d been that way since she was a young girl.
They knew Old Town like the back of their hand, visited Daufuskie Island, spent hours on the May River sandbar and hung out on a dock, Dallas mesmerized by watching the stingrays.
“It’d be the whole family, it was kind of like Thanksgiving in the summer,” Alyson remembered.
Months before Dallas’ death, Brette, her husband and children took a weeklong vacation in Bluffton to visit her sister and soak up the Southern sun. The sisters made a promise: Despite life’s whims, they’d do this once a summer moving forward.
Brette said after Dallas transferred from the College of Charleston to USCB in fall 2021, Dallas’ voice sounded better. In Charleston, the bullying she’d received from Orangeburg classmates over the sexual assault case followed her. Her anxiety and depression increased.
“Immediately, she calls crying and upset,” Brette said of her sister’s freshman year at College of Charleston. “She was being watched because, at that point, charges were filed (against Turner) and I guess they were trying to find whatever they could to discredit her.”
College was supposed to be a fresh start.
It was supposed to be away from the taunting in Orangeburg where Alyson said teachers, students and parents picked sides, where a person was “team Bowen or team Dallas.”
Most sided with Bowen, Alyson said. His family’s name carried a heavy weight. His father, Walt Turner, was on the Orangeburg Preparatory School Board during the alleged assault, according to 990 tax forms, and, as noted on his LinkedIn page, works as an investigator for the state’s First Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
Dallas’ top of her class status and senior class president merit didn’t hold a flame to that type of power.
Transferring to USCB was Dallas’ new beginning. She was near her aunt’s Bluffton home, back in the same town as her best friend and miles away from Orangeburg and Charleston’s haunts.
But the trauma traveled with Dallas.
“She kind of became a different person,” Alyson said. “I always tried to get her out to be social, to meet my friends, to introduce her to new people that were better than the people she knew in high school, but she was always scared to get out there.”
Large groups were too much. Certain smells and noises. Triggers were everywhere. The big personality, huge smile and relentlessly kind Dallas had folded into herself.
Maybe she’d gotten better at hiding her emotions, or Bluffton had helped to begin to heal her wounds. Perhaps it was both. Brette recalled the pride in Dallas’ voice when she told her she’d started meditating before bed. Her sister was smiling again. And the two didn’t talk much about the past anymore.
“When something like that happens to someone, especially your child or your sister or your brother, and you see them doing better, you don’t want to bring it up,” Brette said. “You don’t want to reopen that wound.”
So she didn’t. Instead, they began with “How are you?” and kept it light.
“She was so good at putting up a front,” Brette said. “We just didn’t see it.”
Dallas had forgiven Bowen before her death. That’s just who she was, the family said, Dallas was always looking for the good in people.
But her family and friends now feel anger for her.
“Bowen obviously needs to be held accountable for his actions,” Brette said. “But I think what’s more important, is the solicitor, Brad Hutto and honestly, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, should all be held accountable.”
Case closed
Since 2018, the years have been convoluted for Bowen Turner, the Stoller family and the two other girls Bowen is accused of raping.
While out on bond for a January 2019 first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge related to Dallas, he was accused of sexually assaulting Chloe Bess in June 2019 at an Orangeburg County party, according to previous reporting by The State.
Bowen was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Chloe’s rape, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of first-degree assault and battery in mid-April.
He was sentenced under the Youthful Offender Act and given five years’ probation in mid-April, 2022. Under Circuit Judge Markley Dennis Jr.’s sentencing, Bowen, 19, can avoid having to register as a sex offender as long as he abides by the rules of the probation, according to previous reporting by The State.
One month into his five-year probation, on May 9, Bowen was arrested in Orangeburg and charged with disorderly conduct.
Between November 2021 and February 2022, Bowen violated bond more than 50 times, according to a court brief. He was on “strict house arrest” with an ankle monitor, allowed to live at his grandmother’s house and was restricted to traveling from her home to his, the brief said. Among his violations: He visited a golf course 13 times, made six trips to a golf center, visited Sam’s Club, Costco, Red Robin Restaurant, Hibbett Sports, Staples, an apartment complex and several other places on multiple occasions, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s tracking.
On Thursday, the Orangeburg County First Judicial Circuit Public Index showed Bowen faces additional charges of threatening the life of a public employee and being a minor in possession of alcohol related to the May 9 arrest.
The Stollers — parents Michelle and Karl, and sisters Brette and Karlee — have yet to see any of the justice they’re seeking for Dallas.
Even the trial for Bowen in their daughter’s case was not going to happen. Brette said in early April that Second Circuit Deputy Solicitor David Miller told her parents over a Zoom call that because Dallas was deceased and couldn’t testify it was non-consensual, the solicitor’s office was dropping the case.
“(Miller) said, ‘It’s not worth my time, a judge’s time, nor 12 potential jurors’ time to try a case that we know we can’t win, and the taxpayer’s money,’ ” Brette said.
The Second Circuit Solicitor’s Office did not return a request for comment on what it planned to do with Dallas’ case.
But the Stoller family is firm: They have evidence. Photos. Written statements from Dallas. And a witness, Brette said. She added that her parents have never spoken with Solicitor Bill Weeks.
“There’s just so many conflicts of interest as far as I’m concerned, looking from the outside,” Brette said. “It doesn’t sit well with me.”
15,000 people ‘know what to do’
From where she’s standing, Brette sees it as a failure of the state’s legal system — law enforcement, lawyers and judges. Even on the night Dallas said she was sexually assaulted, a nurse at the Orangeburg hospital talked her out of performing a SANE kit, which gathers DNA evidence after a sexual assault, because Dallas would “face backlash,” Brette said. It wasn’t until Dallas told her parents that the kit was collected the next day.
The Stoller family and friends have decided to take it into their own hands. A petition pushing to reopen Dallas’ case has garnered thousands of signatures to demand a response and action from Weeks. They’re hoping the petition puts a new pressure on the office and increases across-the-board accountability.
“It’s really disappointing to know that 15-plus thousand people know the right thing to do, yet the justice system isn’t agreeing with what we have to say and they aren’t listening,” Alyson, Dallas’ best friend, said. “They aren’t answering our calls. They aren’t setting up interviews with people. They’re just constantly saying no comment.”
Weeks could not be reached for comment.
When Alyson returns to Bluffton, she wants to gather people who knew Dallas, especially those who worked with her, and find a way to make Dallas’ story even more widely recognized.
“No one really wanted to help Dallas in Orangeburg, but in Bluffton we were all a support system for her and we all heard her and we believed her,” Alyson said. “Just knowing that Dallas stepped foot into Bluffton, had a house in Bluffton, and had so many friends in Bluffton, people should have awareness.”
It was the support Dallas needed then, family and friends say, And, despite her death, that she still needs now.
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MOREWhat to do if someone you know exhibits any warning signs of suicide:
Do not leave the person alone. Stay with them or on the phone with them to keep them talking. Remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt. Call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or the S.C. Department of Mental Health’s 24/7 crisis response line at 833-364-2274. Bring the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 3:31 PM with the headline "In memory of Dallas Stoller: Family, Bluffton friends want justice after SC student’s rape."
