By Elesha George
Defence attorney Wendel Alexander, who is helping represent a man accused of raping his 32-year-old ex-girlfriend, challenged the credibility of the victim’s story when the trial reopened on Thursday morning.
The woman, whose identity is protected by law, has accused the man of raping her twice and subjecting her to physical violence.
Yesterday, the prosecution called witnesses, including the girl’s mother, two police officers and a doctor, to take the witness stand during which new details emerged about that day in July 2019. The victim was also cross-examined.
Dr Emmanuel Warner testified that the complainant presented with multiple bruises about the body, particularly to the forehead above the left eye, the front of the neck, the chest, the right forearm and the right hand.
He added that her hymen was not intact but showed no signs of “recent rupture”. She also presented bruises to the vaginal opening and the vaginal wall. He said while such bruising could be as a result of sexual assault, it could also be as a result of having sex multiple times that day.
“My findings can’t determine if it is consensual or not,” he told the defence lawyer.
Alexander, who challenged the victim’s account, questioned why the woman failed to reach out for help or report the matter to the police or anyone else when she had several opportunities to do so. He made many attempts to highlight that her father was a veteran police officer and that she also considered herself a law enforcement officer when the incident occurred in 2019.
It was the woman’s testimony that the accused drove her to a plot of land that he had previously said belonged to his father, then raped her. He then drove her to his parents’ home in Green Bay where she testified that he spoke to a neighbour for five to 10 minutes, before taking her into the house where he raped her a second time in their living room.
She said he then fell asleep for about half an hour on her lap and she did nothing during that time. When questioned she told the lawyer she was under threat, later testifying that he had brought a knife from the kitchen into the living room which he kept near him while he slept.
When he woke up, he drove her to the home of relatives who live just down the road and she got out of the car. She followed him inside and spoke with his parents.
“They saw me in my state and asked what happened,” she said. This information, Alexander pointed out, was not revealed during her recollection to the court on Wednesday nor was it in her statement to the police.
His relatives, she admitted, live in an area which is highly populated with houses. A senior sergeant of police attached to the Special Victims Unit also testified that the plot of land where the first alleged assault happened was a three to five minute walk away from the main road in Green Castle.
Additionally, there seemed to be a discrepancy when she claimed that the man circled for about an hour and a half, then went to meet a prison officer at the officer’s home. The officer and another person, she claimed, were at one point in the vehicle with them.
The couple were together for approximately five to six months. After only about four months together, the woman withdrew $20,000 from a joint account with a relative and another $10,000 from her personal account, which she told the court she gave her then partner to purchase a boat.
Sometime afterwards, the woman claimed she broke up with him but he still owed her the money so when he called on July 22 to say he had the money, she did not hesitate to go with him. After some badgering, she admitted to Alexander that she went of her own free will.
She admitted that she assaulted him first by punching him several times, which caused him to hit her in the ribcage several times. Her mother testified that her daughter came home with bruises on her hands and shoulder, a choke mark on her neck and a mark on her forehead when she returned home that evening.
Attorney Alexander however suggested to the victim that both sexual encounters were consensual and that she hit him not because she was scared but because she was angry with the accused who did not have the money to pay her back that day.
She denied those accusations. “He told me that day, all he wanted to do was get to me,” she said.
The trial is set to resume this morning from 9am where Alexander will continue to assist the accused during cross-examination since he has not officially retained a lawyer.