A former student of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism who was the victim of rape and torture last year took the stand in court Friday to testify against her alleged attacker.
In the second day of the trial, the 24-year-old woman described a step-by-step account of the events of April 13, 2007, when she was raped and brutalized for 19 hours in her apartment on W. 141st Street. Time ran out Friday afternoon before she could complete her testimony, which will continue Monday morning.
After raping her repeatedly, her assailant forced her to ingest an overdose of painkillers with beer—later causing her liver failure—slit her eyelids, and poured bleach and boiling water over her. The attacker tied her with computer cables and set fire to her apartment before fleeing the scene.
If convicted, Robert A. Williams, the 31-year-old defendant accused of perpetrating the attack, faces life in prison for the 71 individual charges against him, including assault, rape, robbery, attempted murder, arson, and kidnapping.
The victim—whose parents left the courtroom for the duration of her testimony—said she saw “a man” with a rolling suitcase as she boarded her building’s elevator and began to be alarmed when he exited on her floor behind her. As she stepped inside her apartment, the man appeared at her door and shouted inside for a fictitious “Mrs. Evans,” at which point the attacker forced himself through the door, covered the woman’s mouth from screaming, and “put me into a chokehold and dragged me into the back of the room,” she testified.
The former student described the sequence of events in which the man raped her several times, as well as repeatedly forced her to perform oral sex on him, in different rooms of the apartment. “I was crying and begging him not to do what he was doing,” she said. “I thought he was going to kill me, and I wanted to survive.”
Prosecuting assistant district attorney Ann Prunty did not ask the victim to identify or describe the perpetrator on Friday, but she indicated she could clearly see the man’s face during the ordeal.
Defense attorney Arnold Levine said he maintains Williams did not perpetrate the assault. “I don’t think [testimony] was damaging against him [Williams] or was damning so far that the victim hasn’t identified him,” Levine said to reporters outside the courthouse. “What she describes is horrific and no doubt that she suffered a great deal.”
Williams did not appear in court on Friday in what Prunty called “a voluntary decision to absent himself.” Williams refused to sign a Department of Corrections document that would have confirmed his waiving his right to appear, though it was signed by a corrections officer, presiding Judge Carol Berkman said.
Levine argued that the court, and he himself, did not know the reasons for his absence, citing the possibility of medical or mental health problems. “I’ve had no contact with him since yesterday afternoon,” Levine said during a lunch break. “I’m not so sure he did refuse [to attend].”
The coworker of a resident of the victim’s apartment building also testified Friday. Celeste DeCamps, a 44-year-old sales rep, said she saw Williams enter the building the night of April 13 while she and tenant Jamie Roth were moving boxes from DeCamps’ car to Roth’s apartment. Williams, carrying a rolling suitcase, allegedly entered the building’s vestibule and pushed past Roth as she opened a locked door leading to the elevator, where he stood without pressing the call button.
DeCamps said she did not see Williams on her two trips to and from the apartment. In the days following, she described Williams for police and eventually picked him out of a police lineup. She also identified Williams in court from a photograph.
“I had a bad feeling, compounded by the fact that he seemed to have just disappeared,” DeCamps said.
Other testimony was that of two detectives from the New York Police Department who processed the victim’s apartment. The detectives presented a large amount of physical evidence they recovered—though much was damaged in the fire and by firefighters—including frayed and melted wires, bleach- and blood-stained clothing, empty beer bottles, and an empty bottle of cold relief medicine. They also testified as to the collection of fingerprint and DNA evidence, though they were not asked whether the evidence identified Williams.
Levine contested the packaging and handling of evidence, as well as what he characterized as the incorrect order in which it was processed. He also noted that many clothes and bed sheets cited as evidence were found together in a plastic bag, raising the possibility of cross-contamination.
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daniel.amzallag@columbiaspectator.com