Woman Disputes Report of Being Kidnapped by Rand Paul, Says He Was Just 'Messing' With Her

The woman who reportedly accused U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul of kidnapping her and trying to force her to take drugs backed away from those allegations on Wednesday, telling the Washington Post that Rand and his friends were just "messing" with her.

The unnamed woman told the newspaper that she wasn't kidnapped by Paul "in a legal sense" and said she wasn't forced to smoke marijuana when she and Paul were college students.

GQ magazine published a report Monday anonymously quoting a woman who claimed Paul and another man came to her house, blindfolded her and tied her up before trying to force her to "take bong hits" in 1983 when the three were students at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

The report also alleged that Paul, who is running as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, was part of a secret society called the NoZe Brotherhood, which "existed to torment the Baylor administration" through "pranks" and its student-run satirical newspaper.

Paul told Fox News that he "categorically" denies the kidnapping allegation. "This stuff is just outrageous and ridiculous. No, I never was involved with kidnapping. No, I never was involved with forcibly drugging people," he said.

Paul’s spokesman, Jesse Benton, said the account "is made up or distorted beyond recognition" and accused the GQ reporter, Jason Zengerle, of driving a "leftist agenda" meant to damage Paul’s campaign.

"It’s a libel story," Benton said in an interview with FoxNews.com. "It’s just so ridiculous – it's not worth responding to."

The woman quoted in GQ says Paul and another member of the brotherhood drove her to a creek after she refused to smoke marijuana and forced her to worship an "Aqua Buddha."

But the woman appeared to play down such allegations on Wednesday, telling the Washington Post that "the whole thing has been blown out of proportion."

"They didn't force me, they didn't make me. They were creating this drama: 'We're messing with you,'" she told the newspaper. "I went along because they were my friends. ... There was an implicit degree of cooperation in the whole thing. I felt like I was being hazed."

GQ said in an e-mail sent to FoxNews.com on Tuesday that the magazine stands by its story.

"We've vetted, researched and exhaustively fact-checked Jason Zengerle's reporting on Rand Paul's college days," said GQ editor-in-chief Jim Nelson. "We stand by the story, and we gave the Paul campaign every opportunity to refute it," he said. "We notice that they have not, in fact, refuted it.”

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