Who is Rachel Yould? Is she a victim of domestic violence or a schemer who took on two identities to get rich?

Did the 37-year-old ex-beauty queen and academic scholar fraudulently use two Social Security numbers and two names to obtain more than $600,000 in student loans to enrich herself, as federal prosecutors maintain, or was she sexually abused as a child, raped as a young woman and forced into hiding with a new identity?

That depends on whose side of the story you believe.

Yould's defenders say she was victimized twice; first as a child and then by a Social Security Administration program that helps victims of domestic abuse hide from their tormenters by providing new Social Security numbers.

They say overzealous prosecutors _ fired up by Homeland Security's concerns about terrorism and the misuse of Social Security numbers _ came after Yould, the 1996 Miss Anchorage winner who has no criminal background.

"This is a persecution," said Irene Weiser, executive director of Stop Family Violence, a national group that helps victims of domestic and sexual violence.

Weiser said about 14,000 people have availed themselves of the Social Security identity program, and while there have been some similar problems the pursuit of Yould is the worst she's seen.

Prosecutors contend that Yould is a schemer who used a government program intended to help abuse victims to get around limits on government-run student loan programs.

They contend that when the Fulbright and Rhodes scholar who was accepted into Oxford University's doctoral program maxed out several educational loan programs she devised a scheme to get more money using her two identities.

Federal prosecutor Retta-Rae Randall said it wasn't the government that blew Yould's cover by exposing both her maiden and married names on court documents. It was Yould.

"She used both names," Randall said.

What is certain is that Yould is in legal trouble, facing felony charges of mail and wire fraud and making false statements to influence a bank. She is to go on trial next spring.

Yould declined to be interviewed for this story on the advice of her public defender, Richard Curtner, who also declined comment.

Prosecutors say beginning in June 2001, Yould applied for 26 student loans and 21 of those involved some sort of misrepresentation or false information.

They contend that after Yould, then known as Rachel Hall, reached the lifetime cap on several government-run education loan programs she applied for a new Social Security number under the program for victims of domestic abuse. The new number was issued under the name Rachel Yould in July 2003, after she married Brett Yould, also from Anchorage.