Woman, 26, Testifies That Rock Singer Tortured Her Over Missing Drugs : Courts: She says Rick James carried out a forced-sex scenario that she likened to his 1981 hit ‘Super Freak.’

A 26-year-old woman testified Tuesday in San Fernando Superior Court that singer Rick James tied her naked to a chair, burned her legs and abdomen and forced her to have sex with his girlfriend before he had sex with both of them.

“It was like a ‘Super Freak’ sandwich with Tanya in the middle,” said the woman, making a wordplay on the title of the singer’s 1981 hit song, and referring to his girlfriend, Tanya Anne Hijazi.

The woman’s testimony came on the second day of James’ trial on 15 felony counts stemming from two separate incidents in which he allegedly assaulted two women.

Hijazi, who was originally charged with similar counts, agreed to plead guilty to a single count of assault with a deadly weapon in exchange for dismissal of the others. She will be sentenced Sept. 21 to four years in prison.

The woman, who several times became agitated on the witness stand when she was not allowed to fully explain her answers, said James tortured her on July 16, 1991, because he believed that she had stolen some of his drugs.

Under questioning from Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew Flier, the woman admitted to having spent about six days in James’ home in the Hollywood Hills above Studio City taking crack cocaine, and on two occasions consented to having sex with James before the alleged assault.

She said the day before the incident she had been asleep for more than 24 hours when James called her into his bedroom, ordered her to strip and sit on a chair, then used neckties to lash her arms behind her back and her legs to the chair.

She said James slapped her across the face with the butt of a small gun, doused her with alcohol from the waist down and then began burning her knees and abdomen with a lighter and a hot cocaine pipe. James then ordered Hijazi to bring him a hot kitchen knife and burned her legs with it, she said.

She said he continued burning her for about 40 minutes, and at one point had more cocaine delivered to the house and smoked it while he tortured her. He finally untied her, saying that no one could have endured that much torture and still be lying about not stealing his cocaine.

After allowing her to wash her face with cold water, James then ordered her to have oral sex with Hijazi, then he had sex with Hijazi while Hijazi had sex with her.

The woman, a Georgia native, said she thought several times that James was going to kill her.

“I was just thinking that whatever this guy does to me, I hope my family finds my body,” she said.

The woman said that after having sex, the three of them took more cocaine and “partied into the next day.”

A day later, after noticing that her burns were blistering and swelling, she went to a hospital where administrators notified police because of the degree of the injuries.

She would not identify James, however, and returned that weekend to James’ house, where she took more cocaine but did not have sex with him, she said.

When she returned to James’ house a few days later to recover things she had left behind, James slapped and threatened her for reporting the burns to police, she said.

“He said he could pay someone $5,000 to rip out my tongue and throw acid in my face,” she said. “After that, I thought, why am I protecting him? That’s when I went to the police.”

James’ attorney, Mark Werksman, asked the woman about a $15-million civil suit that she filed against James in September, 1991, but the woman said her attorney filed the suit without her consent. She said she does not plan to sue James for damages.

When Werksman produced a second lawsuit filed in the woman’s name in July, 1992, the woman said she had no knowledge that it had been filed.

“I don’t want his money. I want him to go to jail,” she said.