Players Complained, USC Counselor Says

One of the prosecution’s final key witnesses in the trial of three USC football players charged with restraining a woman and sexually molesting her testified Monday in Los Angeles Municipal Court that male students often yelled at the alleged victim to “get off the (dormitory) floor” while they were taking showers.

“They (the students) were embarrassed,” said Dreux Valenti, who was a peer counselor with the woman during USC’s Summer College last year. “I talked to her about it. No other female counselor ever did that.”

Male students resided on the eighth floor of Pardee Tower, a USC dormitory, and females on the seventh during the special monthlong summer program.

Counselors were allowed on either floor after curfew only if they were performing their duties, a resident adviser of the program testified Monday.

The woman, a 23-year-old graduate student, has charged sophomore football players Michael Jones, Willie McGinest and Jason Oliver with pushing her into Jones’ room, holding her and touching intimate areas of her body last July 20, the final day of the program.

The players contend she voluntarily entered the room and was involved in “horseplay.”

Valenti, a distance runner at USC, said Jones and McGinest complained to him at least five times about the woman touching them when talking. He said he discussed it with her. The woman testified last week that she did not know that anyone had complained about her.

Valenti testified he entered Jones’ room the night of the incident, but said he left after believing that the woman was not in danger. While he was inside, he stated that he saw the woman, who was being restrained, sitting between Jones and Oliver on a bed. Valenti also stated that McGinest was blocking the doorway when the woman got up after he entered.

“I asked what was going on,” Valenti said. “They said they were fooling around.”

Valenti testified the woman said, “Dreux, thank God, and something like ‘help.’ ”

Valenti told the court that he saw the woman about 15 minutes later waiting for an elevator.

“She asked why I left the room,” he said. “She said that was the closest she had ever been to being raped.”