There’s a moment that “changed the entire trajectory” of Kimberly Corban’s life: “I released my name and took my power back”
NEED TO KNOW
- When she was a junior at the University of Northern Colorado, Kimberly Corban was attacked by a strange man in her apartment
- She transformed her trauma into advocacy, becoming a public speaker and crusader for other sexual assault survivors
- Years later, she fell in love with Michael Rourke, the prosecutor who helped convict her rapist, and they now share a blended family
Michael Rourke met Kimberly Corban at perhaps her life’s lowest point.
It was June 2006, one of those days right on the cusp of slipping into summer, and the then-20-year-old Corban was seated in a conference room with her parents in a suburb of Denver. She had been raped in her college apartment days earlier, and police in Greeley, Colo., had just arrested the man responsible for taking her prisoner and terrorizing her.
“What I saw was a broken young lady who couldn’t make eye contact with me. Most of the time, I felt like I was talking to her mom and dad,” recalls Rourke, who was a deputy in the Weld County District Attorney’s Office assigned to Corban’s case. “A lot of what I was saying wasn’t getting through to her.”…