Please don’t miscontrue what I said. I said there was bound to be some attraction, no sexual tension or head explosions involved. Not usually anyway.
I would also consider the co-worker an acquaintance, not a friend. Maybe the problem lies in different definitions of friendship, my standards for what constitutes “friendship” being more than rigid than yours. Men and women can’t be “close friends” then. But for some reason I think people are going to have problems with this statement too.
I also have an update on the original topic. The alleged rape victim said her friend that set us up knew about the incident when we met. So I asked my friend (victim’s friend’s boyfriend) about it and it seems we each heard a different version of the story. In my version, she was drunk, accepted a drink of (roofie) water from a stranger on the street, woke up being raped. In the version her friend heard, she was drunk, ran into some dude on the street, went to his place to keep drinking or whatever, blacked out, apparently had sex with him. Consent remains a mystery in the second version.
This doesn’t really change anything in terms of what actions I’ll be taking since I said I’ll respond with sympathy if she decides to come to me for support (which was explicitly offered) but she hasn’t and probably won’t. I feel no particular obligation or desire to reach out to her first.