Ex-Pals Undercut Rape Accuser

Former friends of the alleged victim in an Orange County sexual-assault retrial testified Tuesday that she was a chronic liar who was nonchalant about the incident and relished the flowers and presents that followed.

Defense witness Alex Chapman said that on the day in July 2002 when the media reported the charges against the three defendants, she went for a ride in the accuser’s car and saw cards and stuffed animals on the backseat. About the rape charges, Chapman said, her friend was “nonchalant.”

“She laughed and giggled” about the gifts she had received, testified Chapman, 18, who said she has known the accuser since kindergarten. “She said, ‘That’s the cool thing about getting raped.’ ”

Prosecutor Chuck Middleton said outside court that if the alleged victim, called Jane Doe during the trial, had made those statements, she was probably trying to mask her true feelings about the incident.

“It’s a coping mechanism,” Middleton told reporters. “It is just horrendous, the disruption that something like this can cause in a person’s life.”

Defense lawyers in the trial, the second for the defendants because the first ended in a jury deadlock last summer, are trying to undermine Jane Doe’s credibility and her assertion that she was unconscious during the alleged assault.

Defendants Gregory Haidl, now 19, and Keith Spann and Kyle Nachreiner, both 20, face up to 23 years in prison if convicted of sexually assaulting Jane Doe at the Corona del Mar home of Haidl’s father, then an assistant sheriff. Jane Doe was 16 at the time.

Within two days of the incident, police recovered a videotape that led to the defendants’ arrest. The 21-minute video, viewed by the jury but not publicly shown, purportedly shows the girl with her eyes closed almost the entire time, showing little reaction as the boys insert objects including a pool cue and Snapple bottle into her as she lies splayed on a pool table.

Chapman was one of five teens to testify Tuesday that Jane Doe had a reputation for dishonesty and a desire to do anything to be popular. All of the day’s witnesses, along with Jane Doe and the defendants, lived in Rancho Cucamonga at the time of the incident.

“She seemed like she would try to do anything to fit in,” said Hayley Fiore, 18, under questioning by Pete Scalisi, one of Haidl’s attorneys. “She was known as a liar.”

Fiore testified that when she and Chapman were playing pool at Jane Doe’s house three days after the incident, the alleged victim held up a pool cue and laughed.

“ ‘I can’t believe this was up me the other day,’ ” Fiore said Jane Doe told them.

When flowers were delivered that same day from Jane Doe’s grandmother, Fiore said, the accuser laughed and said, “I should get raped more often.”

Jane Doe also said the defendants didn’t have to ply her with alcohol to get her to have sex with them, both Fiore and Chapman testified.

“She said she would have done it anyway,” Fiore said.

Fiore and Chapman did not testify in the first trial, but the other young women did. Jenna Stroh, 19, said that when she saw Jane Doe the morning after the alleged rape, her friend reported that she remembered having sex with all three boys.

All of the witnesses said Jane Doe was prone to exaggerate. Middleton then asked why they stayed friends with Jane Doe for so long despite her reputation.

Jane Doe’s lying “was just not worth letting go of a friend,” said Fiore, who said she met the alleged victim in first grade and was in Girl Scouts with her.

Several witnesses acknowledged under cross-examination that they and their friends also lied in high school but that they didn’t think of any girls other than Jane Doe as dishonest.

Outside court, Middleton downplayed the witnesses’ testimony, saying it demonstrated a classic teenage girl phenomenon to turn on one of their own.

“They all said they lied, but she was the one they jumped on,” the prosecutor said. “It gets brutal when you see [girls do] that kind of thing” to another girl.

Their testimony, the prosecutor said, was intended to distract jurors from the main evidence in the trial: the videotape.

“The more these girls can come in and sully Jane Doe’s character, the more the defense hopes the jury will ignore the real evidence,” Middleton said. “We have a smart jury, though. They won’t fall for it.”

Defense attorneys said after court recessed that the ex-friends’ testimony greatly helped their case.

Jurors from the first trial, Scalisi said, had said those witnesses helped them “see Jane Doe in her true light.”

“They all knew Jane Doe very well,” he said, “and they know she’s a liar and had a reputation for being a liar.”

The trial resumes Thursday with the defense’s final five witnesses.

The defendants did not testify in the first trial and are not scheduled to in the retrial.