Alleged Rape Victim Takes Stand at Trial

She resisted at first, the UCLA student testified Thursday, but then remained silent as three high school students sexually assaulted her in her dormitory room on campus two years ago.

“I was really scared, and I didn’t know what they would do to me,” the woman testified in Los Angeles County Superior Court in the trial of the three men she identified as her attackers.

“I thought that if I cooperated, maybe I wouldn’t get hurt, maybe I would be OK.” Only 5 feet tall and 95 pounds, the woman said she did not resist because she was “confused and scared.”

Still a student at UCLA, she answered quietly but firmly as defense attorneys subjected her to more than three hours of cross-examination. She looked the lawyers directly in the eye and spoke in even, measured tones.

She is the key witness against the defendants, and appeared weary toward the end of the day.

The woman was a freshman at UCLA when, she alleges, the three defendants -- Deshawn Carter Stringer, Jamar Dawson and Chuwan Anthony -- raped her. At the time of the alleged attack, the three were football players at Carson High School and were on a field trip to the UCLA campus.

Defense attorney Eugene Matthews, representing Anthony, suggested that the sex was consensual.

Earl Broady Jr., representing Stringer, asked the woman whether she had verbally or physically resisted.

Dawson lawyer Frank Williams Jr. asked why she gave the defendants her phone number. She replied that she “just wanted them to leave.”

All three attorneys focused on why she did not immediately report the alleged assault but instead attended a class, turned in two papers and went to the student health center to ask for the “morning after” pill.

The prosecution is expected to call an expert who will testify about rape trauma syndrome, whose sufferers are disoriented, frightened and confused.

All three men are 18. If convicted, Stringer could receive a maximum of 34 years in prison and Dawson and Anthony a maximum of 42 years. All three are free on bail.

Facing a dozen of the defendants’ relatives, the woman testified that about 11:30 a.m. Dec. 5, 2002, she was working on a paper due in half an hour when the defendants knocked on her door.

She said they told her they were Florida college students transferring to UCLA the next semester to play football and wanted to “make some friends.” She allowed Stringer to enter her room, although she did not invite him in, she said.

She testified that he noticed a photo of her African American boyfriend and in a sexually suggestive tone pleaded with her to “show me [some things] he’s shown you.”

She said that she told Stringer no several times but that he raped her. She said she did not protest.

“I had never met him before, and I didn’t know what he was like or what he would do,” she said. “I already said no several times, and he was still persistent. I didn’t resist. I didn’t know what would happen if I would.”

She testified that after Stringer left, she tried to complete her paper but that Dawson and Anthony entered her room and raped her.

Defense attorneys repeatedly asked the woman about her failure to resist during the alleged rapes, suggesting that the defendants could not have known she was submitting against her will.

The lawyers also repeatedly questioned her three-hour delay in reporting the case.

“All I was thinking about was my paper,” she responded during cross-examination, stressing that if she had not turned it in she could have failed the class.

“I was uncomfortable and scared about what happened, but the main concern for me was my paper,” she said.

She testified that she felt pain, and was taken to a rape treatment center in Santa Monica after she reported the incident to police.

The trial in Los Angeles Superior Court near the airport is expected to continue through next week.

Outside the courtroom, Amy Dawson -- mother of defendant Dawson and foster mother of Stringer -- said, “My son has been vindicated, because she said she never said no to him.”