My little girl...........................

If this happened to my little girl I'd kill the people responsible.

The three young women were bored by the party on South Buena Vista Avenue last March 3. For every guy, there were three girls, and many of them were young. Alcohol flowed from a makeshift bar in the kitchen - beer, vodka and plastic bags of wine slurped down in a routine called "slap the bladder."

The three, all soccer players at De Anza College, were about to leave around 12:30 a.m. when a girl they didn't know gestured to a room off the kitchen and said, "Hey, there's eight guys in that room with one girl."

Thinking that was strange, the soccer players - April Grolle, Lauren Chief Elk, and Lauren Bryeans, all 20, knocked on the French doors to the room, which were being held shut from within.

A De Anza college baseball player opened the door about three inches. "You girls don't know what the f--- is going on," they remember him saying. "Get the f--- out of here."

But a black sheet draped behind the door was lifted a bit at the bottom. As the lights flickered, Lauren Chief Elk bent down and saw a mattress, a girl, a man thrusting above her and a number of pairs of legs surrounding them in a horseshoe.

"We immediately knew what was happening," recalled Chief Elk, 20, as she and Grolle told their story publicly Tuesday for the first time. "We knew it was not right."

The three girls, now "swearing like sailors," in Grolle's description, began knocking more fiercely, pushing their way into the room with all the weight in their slender but tall frames.

"You don't even f------ know the girl," they remember one young man telling them. "Mind your own business." At that point, Grolle made up a lie, giving it credibility by saying - correctly - that the girl was wearing a yellow corset. "I do know this girl, she's a friend of mine," she remembers yelling.

What they found after the boys departed is etched in their memories forever, every last tawdry detail. On her back on the queen-sized mattress was a semi-conscious 17-year-old girl, naked from the waist down. Her eyes were shut. Vomit covered her mouth and ran down the side of her face. Her jeans, panties and one shoe were all shoved down on one leg. The only thing the victim could mutter was "I'm sorry."

"You knew immediately this wasn't consensual sex," the 5-foot-11 Grolle said. "Consensual sex is not supposed to look degrading. It's something that you take responsibility for. The way I found this lifeless young girl - it just didn't look right."

Grolle and Chief Elk detailed that night Tuesday afternoon at the Cupertino home of Susan Stone Belton, a counselor who has helped them in the 11 weeks since the incident occurred. The third young woman, Bryeans, is traveling in France.

The women have gone through rough times: In the first weeks, they were subjected to harassment on the DeAnza campus for telling their story to sheriff's deputies. They missed soccer practices and classes to talk to investigators. And this week, the decision of District Attorney Dolores Carr not to file charges capped the story in a way that's been painful.

If there are heroes to this disturbing tale, it is these three young women, who broke into a room with a bunch of boys and stopped something they knew to be wrong. Investigators have said the victim herself can't remember the events. And so the soccer players must be her spokesmen, her conscience and her witness.

Making their way through the filthy room that night, the girls lifted the victim up wiped the vomit from her mouth. It took a while to get her dressed. Grolle tried to feed her bread and get her to drink some water, but nothing would stay down. As Lauren Chief Elk ran to get her car, Bryeans and Grolle lifted the 17-year-old, who was not light, and carried her out a back kitchen door door to the street to avoid the party.

"I didn't think people needed to see this," Grolle recalled.

Though there were closer hospitals to the Burbank area of central San Jose, Chief Elk knew the location of one emergency room for certain: Kaiser Santa Teresa, more than 10 miles away. And so she floored it, arriving there 15 or 20 minutes later. Grolle rushed inside and the orderlies brought out a wheelchair. Luckily, the girl was a Kaiser patient. By this time, the soccer players had been able only to get a first name and a date of birth from her, but that was enough for Kaiser officials to identify her. "Help me," Grolle remembers the girl muttering.

In the weeks since, the three girls have been in touch with the girl. They've talked to sheriff's investigators. Late Tuesday, they met with Sheriff Laurie Smith.

Grolle and Chief Elk say they couldn't identify most of the people in the room, thoughBryeans, who was friends with the team, knew several of them. And they correct one part of the record: They say they heard no cheering in the room.

Yes, they're baffled by the legal system, though they don't cast any specific criticism of Carr. "It just leaves me with a question," Grolle said. "It's just unfortunate to see an incident like this occur."

Though the DA isn't explaining her call beyond a brief statement Monday, she obviously had reasons. It's well within belief that the victim's lack of memory, or problems with witness statements, could fatally hamper the case. Nobody who followed the Duke lacrosse case can say Carr's caution is wrong. There's a difference between knowing something and being able to prove it in court.

Here's what I can tell you about April Grolle and Lauren Chief Elk: They spoke the truth. As young women, they knew instinctively that something was very wrong in the room behind the French doors. The girl they saw could not have given her consent.

Some people might have walked away at that point. But Grolle and Chief Elk and Bryeans did something more. They broke into the room and told the men to leave. Finally, they're telling their story out loud. Any one of us who have kids would be proud to have them as ours.