UPDATED: Accuser takes stand in McAllister trial to speak of being ‘in hell’

(Editor’s note: This story was updated June 15 at 3 and 10:15 p.m.)

ST. ALBANS — Sen. Norm McAllister’s accuser in the first of two sexual assault cases he is facing took the stand Wednesday and graphically described sexual abuse the state alleges played out over several years.

In one incident, she said, McAllister dragged her upstairs to a bedroom in his home while she struggled, then held her down and raped her while she continued to resist.

Asked on the stand what she was thinking during the alleged assault, she responded, “That I was in hell.”

She said that another time, when she was 16, McAllister forced her to have oral sex with him in an abandoned barn on his Highgate property a few weeks after she began working for him as a farmhand.

The young woman, who is now 21 and stands 4 feet 11, said she weighed 85 pounds at the time of the alleged assaults.

She appeared calm while being questioned by Assistant State’s Attorney Diane Wheeler but took long pauses and sometimes struggled to recall details.

The trial is scheduled for two more days. McAllister, 64, faces two felony counts alleging he sexually assaulted the young woman, who had also been his Statehouse intern. The felony charges each carry a potential sentence of three years to life in prison and fines of up to $25,000. McAllister has maintained his innocence.

The charges focus on the two specific alleged incidents described above.

McAllister’s attorney Brooks McArthur told the jury during his opening statement that his client’s accuser has given different and inconsistent accounts from interview to interview, and at times within a single interview.

A discrepancy emerged Wednesday between what she had told investigators and her testimony on the stand. The young woman had told investigators McAllister forced her to have oral sex or intercourse close to 30 times.

At trial Wednesday, she testified that the actual number of assaults was fewer than what she told investigators, explaining that her recollection of the alleged abuse was not precise or chronological, but based on a jumble of memories.

“I remember bad things that happened, but I don’t remember them in order. I remember bits and pieces that pop back for me, if that explains it,” she said during questioning from the state.

McArthur also said the evidence will also show “that her conduct and her behavior was contrary to the sexual assault allegations she made.”

The state’s case relies primarily on her testimony, McArthur said, and he told the jury that the evidence will show her statements against McAllister are “simply not believable.”

McAllister sat in silence for the most part during the young woman’s testimony, occasionally shaking his head or grimacing.

Earlier, during her opening statement, Wheeler said the case is about a secret the accuser had hoped to keep. One that she hid for years until confronted by law enforcement in May 2015.

That secret was that McAllister began to sexually abuse her when she worked on his farm, Wheeler said. She didn’t want anyone to know, but she wanted it to stop, Wheeler said.

Not allowed to be addressed at trial is the fact that detectives were led to the young woman through another woman who also claims McAllister raped her repeatedly during the same time period. McAllister is to face charges based on those accusations at a second trial that is not yet scheduled.

The young woman in this case continued to work for McAllister even after being assaulted, Wheeler said, because she needed money and didn’t know how to seek help.

After working as a farmhand, and briefly at McAllister’s son’s flower shop, she volunteered on his re-election campaign and that of Franklin County’s other Republican senator, Dustin Degree. Later she took a job with McAllister in the Statehouse as an intern.

She said several other assaults occurred in McAllister’s Highgate home and a camper on his property, as well as in a Montpelier apartment he shared with two other lawmakers, Rep. Tim Corcoran, D-Bennington, and Sen. Kevin Mullin, R-Rutland — both of whom are expected to testify.

McAllister’s accuser said she continued to work for him at first because she needed the money and was hopeful she could rebuff his advances. Later, she said, she got involved in his political career because it was exciting. She had never been to the Statehouse before, she said.

“It was something new. Something bigger. Something different,” the woman said. It involved secretarial work, which was “her thing,” she said.

But the attacks did not stop when she came to Montpelier, she said. During long rides with the senator from Franklin County, she said, she realized the abuse was unlikely to stop.

The woman described one incident where she said McAllister woke her up, escorted her to his room, directed her to undress and then held her down and raped her. She said she didn’t cry out for fear of waking his legislative roommates, who were in the apartment asleep at the time.

The defense pointed out that she was not paid to work on McAllister’s re-election campaign. Defense attorney David Williams at one point described McAllister as her friend and suggested she was enthusiastic about helping him get re-elected, citing a Facebook post.

The young woman pointed out she was volunteering not just for McAllister and that the Facebook post mentioned both his campaign and Degree’s.

The defense lawyers displayed incredulity that the accuser never came forward to say McAllister was sexually abusing her, but Wheeler said she wanted desperately to remain out of the spotlight and feared ruining the senator’s political career.

“He worked at the Statehouse. I mean, that’s a pretty big thing,” the woman responded to one of Wheeler’s questions.

Defense hammers inconsistencies

During cross-examination, the defense created a detailed timeline, using it to highlight inconsistencies between her testimony Wednesday and four sworn statements she gave over more than a year, the most recent of which was a deposition with the defense in April.

Williams was able to show several inconsistencies between the sworn statements as well, including two taken by detectives on successive days in May 2015.

He pressed her on the inconsistencies for several hours Wednesday afternoon, at times playing audio from two sworn interviews she gave state police detectives during their investigation or from his depositions with her, which were also under oath.

She became visibly upset as she was confronted with the inconsistencies, at times wiping away tears, but she did not, in most cases, try to refute them. At other times it appeared she did not realize she was contradicting herself, asking several times what point Williams was trying to make.

Williams, using the tape, showed that she had told him during a deposition a completely different version of the first time McAllister allegedly assaulted her than what she told in court Wednesday, though the version she gave during the deposition contained many of the same elements of assaults she described on the stand.

She told Williams that McAllister assaulted her on the first day she began working for him and that it involved intercourse inside his house. On the stand Wednesday, she said the first assault occurred in an old barn and involved forcible oral sex.

She testified that when that assault occurred her hair was dyed purple. That first alleged assault occurred when she was working as a farmhand, she said, which was in 2012 and 2013. Williams introduced into evidence a Facebook photo from 2014 where her hair is purple.

The woman also gave different accounts of the total number of sexual assaults, where and when they allegedly took place, and whether McAllister ever ejaculated.

At the end of the day, Williams revealed what may be the crux of McAllister’s defense. He suggested the woman had fabricated the sexual abuse stories out of whole cloth, to appease a jealous former boyfriend who believed she was sleeping with McAllister in Montpelier.

Williams noted that she had told Rachel Feldman, chief of staff to the lieutenant governor, and Rep. Cory Parent, R-St. Albans, that she was having problems with her boyfriend. Both are expected to testify for the defense.

“The only way you could placate (the boyfriend) was to implicate Norm,” Williams said.

“What?” she responded.

“The only way you were going to keep (him) was to claim Norm was raping you?” he said.

“Am I hearing what you just said correctly?”

Williams repeated that she had told Feldman and Parent her ex was angry with her. Yet she never told Feldman that a colleague, a state senator, had raped her more than 20 times, he asked. She said that was correct.

Moments later Franklin County Superior Court Judge Robert Mello cut off the testimony, saying the court would close soon and the trial would begin again Thursday. The day will likely start with Williams completing his cross-examination.

Judge sets ground rules for media

Before the trial began Wednesday, Mello held a hearing on a motion from the Burlington Free Press to allow recordings, including video and images, of the accuser’s testimony.

Mello partly reversed his earlier ruling that no audio, video or images of the woman could be captured in the courtroom. The media are allowed to record audio but not video or images of her, he said.

Initially the state sought to bar any recording of her on the grounds that, given the traumatic and personal nature of her allegations, it would hurt her ability testify.

Wheeler and a victim’s advocate said Wednesday morning they were concerned the accuser would not testify at all if her testimony were broadcast.

The victim’s advocate and a detective with the Vermont State Police both said the accuser was deeply concerned about publicity since being contacted by authorities about the alleged sexual assaults, and that was why she had not come forward.

Bob Hemley, an attorney representing the Burlington Free Press, said there was a compelling public interest in the case and her testimony and that her identity was already public.

The defense argued that McAllister has a significant interest in a public and open trial, in order to clear his name in a case that involves damaging allegations.

At McAllister’s arraignment last year, the court accidentally released the identity and contact information of all three of McAllister’s accusers. When a reporter for Seven Days contacted the woman who is at the center of this trial, she gave an interview. Hemley argued that, as a result, her identity has long been public.

The woman testified during the pretrial hearing that it would be traumatic for her testimony to be broadcast.

Judge Mello acknowledged the case involves tremendous public interest given the serious accusations against a member of the Legislature, as well as the extremely private nature of the young woman’s testimony.

Ultimately, the potential trauma and harm that could be caused by her image being broadcast “nationally and internationally” outweighed the public interest in broadcasting her image, he said.

 

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