Woman accuses husband of rape
April 10, 2007
Adapted from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
A woman told a jury about the day in 2004 that her estranged husband terrorized her, held police at bay for five hours then shot himself in the chest.
She testified that he had followed her from a nursing home until he passed her car and blocked her.
He then used a key to force his way into her locked car and took her to their former home where he sexually assaulted her, she told the jury.
The whole time, she said, she said little in response to his pleas to reconcile their 8-year-old marriage "because I didn't want him to act out any worse than he was."
She began her testimony on the first day of the retrial for rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, terroristic threats, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering and resisting arrest.
State police arrested the 30-year-old man after a five-hour standoff when he shot himself in the chest with a hunting rifle.
The wife, 28, got away shortly after her husband raped her because a state trooper responded to an emergency call and began knocking on the front and rear doors, she testified.
At that point, she said, she already had escaped from a walk-in closet that he locked her in, and she had bruises on her wrists and arms and scratches on her back. She said she had discouraged her husband from binding her wrists with a yellow rope by agreeing to do anything he wanted her to do.
"I knew if he tied me up, there was nothing I could do to defend myself," she testified.
The alleged abduction happened days after they filed petitions against each other for protection from abuse.
Their divorce recently became final while the man was incarcerated and awaiting trial.
At the first trial in 2005, jurors acquitted him of kidnapping and stalking, but could not reach unanimous verdicts for other charges. |
