‘I Don’t Remember Anything,’ O.C. Accuser in Gang-Rape Trial Testifies

A distraught 19-year-old woman at the center of a high-profile Orange County rape trial wept as she told jurors Wednesday that she neither consented to nor remembered having sex with multiple partners and engaging in sex play.

Her testimony came as a video of the July 2002 incident was replayed in the courtroom -- a video that she saw for the first time only two weeks ago.

The woman testified against the three young men accused of sexually assaulting her after she had allegedly passed out at a party.

She was 16 at the time; her alleged assailants were 17.

The July 5, 2002, gathering was at the Corona del Mar home of one of the defendants’ fathers, then a ranking sheriff’s official.

“You didn’t climb up on the pool table that night naked?” Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Chuck Middleton asked her, referring to the videotaped incident.

“No,” she whispered, blinking away tears from her reddened eyes.

“Did you ask one of these defendants to put a pool cue [inside you]?”

“No,” she said, exhaling heavily. After several more questions, she added, “I don’t remember any of that. I don’t remember anything.”

Jane Doe, as she is referred to in the case, took the stand two days after a judge halted opening statements when a defense attorney improperly referred to her drug use and sexual history.

He gave a revised statement Wednesday morning, but was stopped after repeated warnings about his stepping over legal bounds.

The accuser was the trial’s first witness. Her testimony is expected to last three to four days.

In the afternoon, Jane Doe, in a black striped suit and red sweater, her face leaner and hair a darker brown than in the first trial, answered the prosecutor’s questions while ignoring the three defendants for the most part.

Charged and possibly facing up to 23 years in prison are Gregory Haidl, now 19, and Keith Spann and Kyle Nachreiner, both 20. Jane Doe and they were high school students in Rancho Cucamonga in summer 2002; Haidl has since moved to Orange County.

His father, Donald Haidl, resigned in September as an assistant sheriff.

The first trial ended in a mistrial after the jurors deadlocked, most favoring acquittal.

Jane Doe testified that she passed out during the July 5, 2002, gathering with the defendants after gulping down 8.5 ounces of gin from a plastic foam cup.

The defendants say she was a conscious participant in the encounter.

The incident has left its mark on her, Jane Doe said.

When asked if she had been in the habit of drinking a small bottle of vodka every day as a teenager, as the defense has alleged, she said no.

“Drinking alcohol progressed to that after the rape occurred,” she said.

Her habit of using methamphetamines also started after the alleged rape, her lawyer said, when she was arrested last fall on suspicion of possessing drugs for sale.

Middleton, who was not the prosecutor in the first trial, said he wanted Jane Doe to see the tape made by Gregory Haidl because the case revolved around it.

She was reluctant to watch it, Middleton said, taking weeks after he first asked her to agree to do it. She appeared shocked after watching it at the district attorney’s office in Santa Ana with a female investigator and victim-witness advocate, he said.

Defense attorneys, who will continue cross-examining Jane Doe today, said outside court that her tears appeared fake.

“The crying seemed rehearsed,” said one of Haidl’s attorneys, Pete Scalisi.

“I don’t think the jurors will be unduly swayed by it,” the attorney said.

In his second attempt at an opening statement Wednesday morning, Haidl’s other attorney, Joseph G. Cavallo, was cut off after five warnings from Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno that his statement was verging on improper arguments.

But in the nearly 90 minutes he spoke, Cavallo said Jane Doe was lying when she said she didn’t recall the events shown on the 19-minute tape.

“Jane Doe has selective memory,” Cavallo told the jury.

“She chooses to remember what she wants”