Former University of Hawaii at Manoa student Tyler Strong took the witness stand in his defense Thursday against allegations of sexual assault of a fellow student, whom he considered a close friend.
Strong, 19, testified that he had consensual sex with the 18-year-old woman accusing him of raping her in his UH dorm room in September.
The woman previously testified that after a night of partying and drinking, she went over to Strong’s room expecting she might kiss and cuddle with him to get back at another guy she liked — Strong’s next-door neighbor — whom she had fought with earlier in the night.
She said she did not want to sleep with him and that Strong forced himself on her and raped her amid her repeated protests to stop. She reported the assault to university campus security and police.
Strong, who now lives in Eugene, Ore., is charged with two counts of first-degree sex assault, a Class A felony punishable by a mandatory 20-year prison term, and one count of third-degree sex assault, which carries up to five years in prison.
Both Strong and the woman say they were friends who would flirt with each other and hang out often, and that Strong would occasionally spend the night in her dorm room. They had kissed at least once before, but the woman decided afterward that they should just be friends.
"It wasn’t really meant to happen. It was just, like, we both were lonely or something," she said earlier this week, adding that she started having feelings for another guy.
Strong said he was attracted to her and wanted to be more than friends.
On the night of Sept. 20, the woman said, she got in a fight with Strong’s former neighbor Kaymen McCracken. McCracken, who now lives in California, testified that he and the woman were "friends who had sex."
After the fight, the woman said, she and her friends drank vodka and rum drinks before going to Strong’s dorm room at about 10 p.m. to hang out. She went back to her dorm around midnight, where she and her friends continued drinking.
Strong says the woman came over to his room around 5 a.m. Sept. 21 after he sent her text messages including, "Baby I wanna give it to you come back," and "Me+you+bed=night."
"I wanted to sleep with her," Strong said of the text messages.
Strong said she never told him "no" or to stop at any time and that she "was being very passionate with me."
"She had her hands on the back of my neck, sort of trying to hold me close," he testified.
The woman, however, said she told him to stop six times.
"I was crying very, very obviously," she recalled through tears Monday. "I told him, like, six times to stop, and, like, I don’t know why six stands out, but it does. I told him six times to stop, and then he finally did after the sixth time."
When asked under cross-examination Wednesday whether she screamed for help or fought back, she said, "No, I just laid there."
Strong said after they had sex, she "began to cry out of nowhere" and abruptly left.
"At that point I just felt completely used," he said. "I was quite upset."
Under questioning by Strong’s attorney, Jeffrey Hawk, the woman said she wanted "revenge" on McCracken even though it was "immature and shallow."
"I was expecting Tyler to tell Kaymen, to be honest," she said of her plans to kiss and cuddle with Strong. "I thought we were done, Kaymen and I, so I just figured, like, this would just piss him off."
The woman testified that she made two phone calls just after leaving Strong’s dorm room, one to her friend and another to McCracken.
"Your second call was to Kaymen, right? And you told Kaymen, ‘I got raped,’ right?" Hawk asked. "And then you hung up, right? And at that point you had your revenge, right?"
She yelled, "No!" and began sobbing.
Strong estimated he had three to four drinks that night, and described his memory of the night as clear and "quite vivid." The woman said she had around six drinks that night and under cross-examination said her memory was "pretty good."
Earlier this week the woman’s friend testified that she found her friend on the front lawn of Johnson Hall B, the dorm where Strong lived, "in a fetal position, crying hysterically and pulling at grass." A campus security officer also testified that the woman was hunched over and "crying profusely."
The doctor who examined the woman the morning of the alleged incident testified that he did not find any internal or external injuries. A DNA specialist with the Honolulu Police Department testified that she detected semen and sperm cells in the woman but could not determine whether they matched Strong’s DNA profile.
Hawk twice on Thursday asked Judge Randal Lee for a judgment of acquittal of the charges.
In denying the motions, Lee said, "Based on the totality of the evidence presented in this case, giving the jury the right to determine credibility, the weight of the evidence and draw whatever justifiable inferences from the evidence, a reasonable mind might fairly conclude guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
The jury will hear closing arguments Friday, and jury deliberations are scheduled to begin Monday.
