Accuser testifies in former college baseball player’s rape trial

A woman who says she was raped by an ex-University of Delaware baseball player accused of multiple sexual assaults testified under cross-examination Thursday that she did not protest when he removed all her clothes as they lay in his bed.

The woman also acknowledged that she told friends in the days leading up to her meeting with Clay Conaway that she needed sex, and that she drove to his house in June 2018 knowing that he wanted to have sex.

She is among six women whom Conaway is accused of sexually assaulting between 2013 and 2018.

She testified earlier this week that she was surprised, then anxious and afraid, when consensual cuddling and kissing with Conaway quickly escalated to physical force and violence, and that she faked an orgasm in an effort to get him to stop. She is scheduled to finish testifying Friday.

Her graphic text messages, presented in court, showed that in the days before the incident, she told girlfriends she was “struggling” with a lack of sex and knew that Conaway wanted to “legit” have sex with her that night.

“Yeah I want some sex. That’s what I want and honestly I know for a fact I can’t handle a relationship ... because I can barely handle myself emotionally lol,” she said in one text.

The woman previously testified that the day after she and Conaway connected on the online meeting site Bumble, he sent her a nude photo of himself on Snapchat.

“Now I know what he’s on Bumble for,” the woman texted a friend.

Earlier Thursday, a sexual assault examiner testified that she found no visible injuries on the woman, and that she did not tell her she had been strangled or choked. The woman had testified a day earlier that Conaway put his hand on her throat and choked her.

Dana Morris, a nurse and certified sexual assault examiner, said she could not recall whether the woman told her she had been beaten, although a box on a medical form indicated that she reported being “beaten/choked.”

Another entry for listing physical force used against an alleged rape victim noted only that the woman said Conaway had pushed her onto his bed. The woman testified in court, however, that Conway told her to sit on the bed, and she complied.

“She did complain of pain to her right wrist,” Morris said.

Prosecutors allege, however, that the women’s injury, which must be shown for a conviction for first-degree rape, was to her hips, because Conaway pinned her knees up against her shoulders. Two days after her sexual assault exam, the woman returned to the hospital complaining of hip pain. She was diagnosed with hip strain and told to take ibuprofen.

Morris, the nurse, testified that the woman did not complain of any hip pain during her initial hospital exam, and that medical records showed she had a normal range of motion and normal motor strength.

Conaway’s accuser acknowledged that she had told several friends before their encounter that she suffered from fibromyalgia, a condition marked by chronic and widespread musculoskeletal pain, and that her joints and muscles hurt “basically all the time.”

The day before meeting Conaway, the woman texted a friend that she was in significant pain after attending a four-day musical festival in Dover, and that all the walking and standing she had done “totally killed my legs.”

“I feel like I’m 85 and need a double hip replacement,” she wrote.