The woman who accused former Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler of rape told police at one point that she wanted to drop the case, saying she “just didn’t want to deal with it after all the emotional stress I’ve had.”

Meanwhile, Ziegler told police that his accuser initiated the sexual encounter when he arrived at her apartment on Oct. 2, according to newly released records from the Sarasota Police Department.

While wavering over whether she wanted to prosecute Ziegler, the alleged victim continued to insist over her interviews with police that the encounter was not consensual.

Sarasota Police released transcripts of interviews with the alleged victim and Ziegler, who wasn’t charged with rape after investigators concluded a video he took of the Oct. 2 incident showed it was “likely consensual.” A related investigation into whether Ziegler committed video voyeurism has been turned over to the State Attorney’s Office to decide if charges are warranted.

The interview transcripts were released as part of a public records request by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Much of the information in the transcripts has been summarized and previously made public in reports released by the police, but the transcripts provide more details.

The fact that Ziegler’s accuser considered dropping the case has not previously been reported.

The alleged victim met with two Sarasota Police detectives on Oct. 25. A detective started the interview by mentioning that “you called… and said that you didn’t want to go through with the… You didn’t want to do anything. Is that still your mindset?”

The alleged victim asks detectives what they think.

“That’s your call,” says a detective. “I can’t tell you one way or another.”

“It’s a lot to get through,” the alleged victim responds.

Another detective suggests counseling and asks the alleged victim whether she is receiving family support. The interview continues, and the detectives try to elicit more information from the alleged victim about her prior contacts with Ziegler, who she previously had consensual sex with, and what happened on Oct. 2.

The detectives eventually returned to whether the alleged victim wanted to move forward with the case.

“I mean, you guys know more than me,” the alleged victim says. “Is this a fight worth fighting or not? Is it better I just move on? I don’t know.”

“That is totally up to you,” a detective says.

The detective goes on to explain how the court process can “drag out” over multiple years.

“I just want to be upfront and honest with you, but I don’t want to sway you, either,” the detective said.

“Just tell me your honest opinion,” the alleged victim says later.

“If somebody raped me, I would want them to pay for it,” the detective says.

“One hundred percent,” says another detective.

“So long as you’ve known me, I would never make something like this up,” the alleged victim responds.

The records released this week include at least three interviews with the alleged victim.

Detectives are clearly frustrated at times by the alleged victim’s inability to remember key details about the encounter and the timeline of events.

Toward the end of the Oct. 25 interview, a detective tells the alleged victim that “being completely blunt, you’re going to have to work on trying to remember what happened.”

During an interview with another individual who was in contact with the alleged victim shortly after the Oct. 2 incident, a detective tells that person that police have met with the alleged victim “a couple of times and it’s just really hard for her to give us any details.”

Detectives eventually pieced together a timeline and description of events in a final police report that they released in February.

The alleged victim told police that “she agreed to have sex with Christian Ziegler (on Oct. 2) because she believed that his wife Bridget Ziegler was going to join them for a threesome,” according to police documents, and that “when she learned that Bridget was not going to make it, she changed her mind and informed Christian not to come over.”

The alleged victim said Christian Ziegler came to her apartment anyway, showing up at her door, and that’s when the alleged assault occurred. But the details of what happened were hard for her to remember, she said.

Police described the alleged victim as “incoherent and distraught” during an Oct. 5 interview. During that conversation, the alleged victim said that Ziegler has “been assaulting me for years.”

“Have you ever reported this before?” an officer asks.

“How do you report someone like that?” she said.

Earlier in the interview the alleged victim said that Ziegler “thinks he’s above the law because of who he is. He’s a politician. They think they’re above the law.”

“They get to do it, and I’ve let him do it to me for a long time,” she added.

The alleged victim said Ziegler entered her apartment and assaulted her. Police pressed her for details, and she restated the information.

In a subsequent interview on Nov. 1, the alleged victim said she started drinking before Ziegler came over on Oct. 2 and “my memory’s foggy.”

“I feel like I definitely was intoxicated enough that I was not in a place to consent,” she says.

The alleged victim said she “briefly remember bits of him being here and then leaving.”

When a detective asks about her earlier description of Ziegler assaulting her, she said of the location: “I believe we… I don’t know if he exactly… I don’t remember all of it. I do remember it being there.”

“That’s all I remember. That’s the only part of it I remember,” she adds.

Christian Ziegler also gave at least three interviews to police.

During the first interview on Nov. 2, Ziegler already was aware that the alleged victim was upset because of a phone call the two had after the Oct. 2 encounter. He told police “I kind of know what this is about” before detectives informed him of the sexual assault allegation. Ziegler also was acutely focused on the allegations becoming public, and the publicity the case would receive.

“So I’m chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, so there’ll be a high public interest in the case,” Ziegler tells police. “I have to navigate this not just from the fact base, but from also a political, PR angle.”

“I’m more sensitive about the PR side, the political side, than I am about he facts. Okay?” Ziegler says at another point, adding later that, “Even if it’s baseless it still impacts me.”

The Republican Party of Florida removed Ziegler as chair in January, before police opted not to charge him with sexual assault.

Ziegler later invoked his right to an attorney and cut the Nov. 1 interview short after police told him he was accused of sexual assault. He met with officers again the next day with his attorney, Derek Byrd, present.

During the second interview, Ziegler told police that he had known the alleged victim for more than a decade and that they “had relations back when we first met, and those started again about three years ago or four years ago… and then it’s just been periodic since.”

“It’s a very kind of friends benefits relationship,” he added. “Never been an issue until now, I guess.”

Police asked Ziegler what happened on Oct. 2 and he told them that he messaged the alleged victim in the morning and they agreed to meet in the early afternoon.

Ziegler told police that, after arriving at the alleged victim’s apartment, he engaged in “small talk” with her and “then she started to engage.”

“How did she engage?” a detective asks.

“She just started undoing my pants,” Ziegler says, adding later that “right there in the kitchen she engaged.”

When the detective asks Ziegler to elaborate, he says “she might’ve tried to kind of kiss me a little bit first” before performing a sex act.

“And then we walked over to the bedroom and had intercourse there,” he added.

A detective asked Ziegler if the alleged victim was “upset at any point in time” and he replied “no, never.”

“There was never any indication that she was upset about anything until about a week ago,” Ziegler said, adding that he was “kind of blindsided” when she expressed concerns about the incident during a subsequent phone call. Ziegler also insisted that he asked the alleged victim if she’d been drinking and she said no.

Toward the end of the interview Ziegler reiterated that the encounter was “consensual.”

“I was invited in. When I went in, she engaged,” he said.

He was at her apartment for 36 minutes according to the interview transcript.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Records show Christian Ziegler’s accuser didn’t want to prosecute