Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 1, 1992 TAG: 9202010163
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS LENGTH: Medium
TYSON'S ACCUSER: `I WAS FOOLED'
The teen-age beauty contestant who accused Mike Tyson of rape said Friday that she willingly walked into the boxer's hotel bedroom because she was misled by his pleasant manner and had no idea he wanted sex."When a man asks you to accompany him into his bedroom, wouldn't you take that as an invitation to engage in sexual activity?" Tyson attorney Vincent Fuller asked.
"No. He was being nice. I was fooled," the 18-year-old said. "Anybody can be fooled. I look back on it now and say, `Yeah, it was stupid.' But that didn't leave any reason for him to do what he did."
Tyson, 25, is charged with rape, confinement and criminal deviate conduct. If convicted, the former world heavyweight champion faces up to 63 years in prison.
During three hours of cross-examination Friday, Fuller did not ask the woman about sex with Tyson, which the boxer maintains was consensual.
"You never met Mr. Tyson before July 18, but within minutes he's hugging you and asking you out?" Fuller asked. "You willingly drove to his hotel? You willingly went to his suite? You willingly sat on the bed?"
"Yes," the woman replied.
"Why didn't you sit on the couch?" the attorney asked.
"You couldn't see the TV from the couch," she said.
The two met during a rehearsal for the Miss Black America pageant on July 18. The woman has testified that she was in bed about 1:30 a.m. on July 19 when Tyson called her from his limousine and insisted she come out and talk with him while they drove around Indianapolis.
She said she hadn't heard Tyson make sexual comments and lewd suggestions to other pageant contestants and said she believed he was a "nice person, a respectable person" because she saw him praying with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
During questioning Thursday by prosecutor Greg Garrison, the woman said Tyson took her to his hotel room, pinned her on a bed with his forearm, stripped her, raped her and laughed while she cried in pain and begged him to stop.
"I said, `Please, you're hurting me! Please, stop!' And he started laughing, like it was a game," she told the jury.
Chris Low, the hotel's overnight bellman, testified Friday that he saw the woman leaving Tyson's room carrying her shoes the night of the alleged rape. Low said he was delivering a hamburger to Tyson's bodyguard, Dale Edwards, in the adjacent room when she emerged.
"As I started to push the cart in, I look up at Mr. Edwards, and he's got this smirk on his face," Low said. He said he followed Edwards' gaze and saw the woman, dazed and disoriented, wandering the wrong way down the hall.
She said Friday that she decided to press charges against Tyson only after her parents asked her: "`If this happened to someone else, would you be able to live with yourself?' And I thought about what kind of person I am, and I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself."
During cross-examination Friday, Fuller picked at inconsistencies in the woman's statements and tried to shore up the defense contention that she lied about being raped out of anger for being used as a one-night stand.
"Did you have some hopes of establishing a relationship with Mr. Tyson?" Fuller asked.
"I would never see him again," she replied. "How could I hope to have any relationship with him?"
"After the encounter, didn't you say, `Aren't you even going to walk me downstairs?"'
"No. I didn't want him to," she replied. "I didn't want him near me."