SIMI VALLEY : Witness, 72, Faces Sex Case Defendant

The third victim in a highly unusual sexual molestation case in Simi Valley took the stand Tuesday to relive the alleged attack face to face with the defendant, who was acting as his own lawyer.

The 72-year-old witness’s family said the trip to court was the longest outing she had taken in a year and that she was in frail health.

But during two hours of testimony, she responded firmly to questions from defendant Victor Sumner.

Sumner, a former nurse’s aide at Simi Valley Hospital, allegedly fondled the woman, who was in the hospital in July recovering from heart surgery. On Monday, he cross-examined two other women he is charged with molesting while they were patients.

During his cross-examination Tuesday, Sumner quizzed the woman about her memory of the incident, asking if she could recall every detail.

“I remember it as if it happened yesterday,” she said, leaning from her wheelchair to the microphone.

“When you have a trauma--when something like that happens to you--you remember it.”

He repeatedly questioned her memory and asked why she did not push the molester’s hand away to keep from been fondled. She said that it all happened quickly, and as soon as she felt his hand she called out for help.

Sumner asked if she could have been confused during the attack, and the woman snapped: “It was my body that was weak, not my mind.”

Sumner, who is legally entitled to represent himself, asked a range of questions that brought frequent objections from Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrice D. Koenig.

Midway through the day’s testimony, with the jury out of the room, Sumner asked the judge for more leeway with his questioning.

“We went over this when you requested to represent yourself,” Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. told Sumner.

“I told you, you’re going to be under the same rules as anyone else.”

When Sumner finished cross-examining the elderly woman, her family converged to comfort her.

“She’s done real well, but I could see the strain in her face,” her son-in-law said outside the courthouse. “It must have been tough for her to relive what happened.”