Woman at center of alleged Naval Academy gang ? testifies for first time...
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usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/28/20237247-woman-at-center-of-alleged-naval-academy-gang-? -testifies-for-first-time
WASHINGTON — The female U.S. Naval Academy midshipman at the center of a sexual assault case testified for the first time Wednesday, describing the events that led to three of her fellow midshipmen allegedly attacking her.
The three men — Tra'ves Bush, Eric Graham and Joshua Tate —are accused of sexually assaulting the woman on April 14, 2012 after she passed out ? at a party.
During her testimony at the preliminary hearing Wednesday, the female midshipman, said she remembered waking up with back pain and few memories of the previous night.
"I noticed I was really disheveled," she testified. "I was really nerve-wracked because I didn't know what had happened."
Later that day, Tate, who had invited her to the party, told her that she had sex with him and Graham, she testified.
"He was like, ‘What? You don't remember?'" she said. "He told me that we had sex and he was going to have to refresh my memory."
"He was laughing," she added, "and then I was like, ‘I don't want to hear anymore.'"
The Article 32 hearing, held at D.C.’s Navy Yard, is one of the highest-profile military sexual assault cases since President Obama made his first public condemnation of such actions, at the Naval Academy’s commencement ceremony in May.
“It only takes the misconduct of a few to further erode the people’s trust in their government,” Obama said that day in Annapolis, Md.
The results of this case, and others like it, may have policy implications for how the military deals with reports of sexual assault, which have increased exponentially in recent years. A Pentagon study estimated that unwanted sexual contact in the military jumped by 37 percent in 2012 to 26,000 cases.
The alleged victim, who was in her sophomore or “youngster” year at the Academy when the alleged attack occurred, said during her direct testimony Wednesday that she had been drinking heavily that day. She was only 20 at the time, under the legal drinking age.
She and several friends had gone to an off-campus residence, known as the “Football House,” for a “Togas and Yogas”-themed party, in which men dressed in togas and women in yoga pants. The atmosphere was frenzied, she said, with hundreds of guests, many spread out on the front lawn, and a Disney-themed bounce house in the yard.
She said that as she kept drinking, her recollection of the night faded to snippets: first dancing with friends, then sitting on a bed as Bush stood over her. The woman and Bush had recently ended a casual sexual relationship, she said.
During cross-examination with Bush’s defense counsel, she said she could not definitively recall whether or not she and Bush had had sex in the bedroom, but that he had subsequently told her that he had informed investigators from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that they had, in fact, had sex.
The next snippet the woman said she remembered was crouching down in a car later that night, with two of the other alleged attackers, Graham and Tate, as well as one other Academy classmate.
She recalled Graham’s body angled towards her, she said, and that she repeatedly said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and felt upset at the time. The rest of her time in the car was a blank, she said, with her final memory of the night being falling asleep on a couch inside the house.
The next day, she said she woke up, feeling groggy, and began talking to another Navy football player who was cleaning up the house. She said she told him her back hurt and asked him to feel the knots in her back, which he agreed were large.
About 45 minutes later, the woman testified that she and the player had consensual sex, after which he suggested she get a ride back to the Academy with his friends. Entering his friends’ car, she realized it was the same one she had been in the night before, and noticed there was an open, empty condom wrapper on the floor of the car.
Trying to piece together the rest of the night, the woman texted Tate, asking him to come to her dorm room. While waiting for him, she noticed derogatory comments being made on social media by her classmates towards an unnamed woman. One Twitter message read, she testified, “She’s loving the crew, that’s my ? too.”
When Tate arrived, she asked if they had had sex. “What, you don’t remember?” she says he asked, with what she described as a “suggestive” look on his face. “I’m going to have to refresh your memory, then,” he added.
She asked if she had also had sex with Graham, to which he responded that she had been “too turnt up,” slang for excessively ? , and said they had indeed had sex.
The woman told Tate she didn’t want to hear any more, but allowed him to stay in her room for a while longer, during which they both checked social media on their phones. The woman said she saw that since he had been in the room, Tate had tweeted: “The train tickets were on the low,” suggesting, the woman said, that she was “easy to drive a train through,” meaning to have sex with multiple partners one right after the other.
The woman testified that rumors began to spread about her via word of mouth and social media. She said that she finally “buckled” and became emotional when she went to the Brigade Medical Unit on campus the following Wednesday and told an employee there that she had had sex over the weekend, without a condom, but did not know who her partner(s) were.
The alleged victim was still reluctant to come forward with her story because, she said, she didn’t want to “make it a big deal.” She also began tearing up as she said she didn’t want to disappoint her mother.
And although she knew other women who had reported sexual assault, “I guess I just didn’t have the courage,” she said.
But once she heard that the NCIS was targeting people the woman knew had not been involved, she decided to make her first sworn statement, in September 2012.
She said she held back portions of information, however, and informed the NCIS that she did not want to cooperate completely. It was not until January 2013 that she decided to fully cooperate and participated in wiretapped conversations, among them one in which Tate indirectly acknowledged that they had had sex that April night.
Cross-examination for the alleged victim will continue Thursday – the hearing’s investigating officer suggested all parties should be prepared to spend the weekend in court if it took that long – but Bush’s lawyer, Andrew Weinstein, got through what he suggested was about 40 percent of his examination on Wednesday evening.
He questioned the motivation of the woman’s private lawyer, Susan Burke, who has been vocal on the issue of sexual assault within the military, saying she had only taken the case for the publicity.
He also suggested that the woman’s interaction with Bush inside the bedroom had been flirtatious, as she testified she had jokingly said that she wasn’t “good enough to be [his] girl.” Weinstein also noted that the woman’s other sexual encounters with Bush had all been consensual.
Weinstein submitted the woman’s prescription for anti-nausea drug promethazine, which may have been in her system the night of the alleged attacks. He cited the website drugs.com as saying promethazine is known to cause dizziness and muscle stiffness, both of which the woman said she had experienced that night or the following morning.
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Weinstein concluded the evening’s questioning with the assertion that the woman may be facing perjury charges because she neglected to correct an erroneous point in the NCIS sworn statement regarding her diagnosis after she visited the Brigade Medical Unit.
She told the NCIS that she had denied any "positive diagnoses" to Tate and Graham, which Weinstein noted was actually false, because she had in fact received a "diagnosis" (the specificity of which has not yet been admitted to the hearing).
But the final NCIS sworn statement asserted as fact that the woman had not been diagnosed with anything — which was not actually what she had told the NCIS investigators (rather, she only said she told the two midshipmen that she didn’t have any diagnosis). But when the woman reviewed the NCIS statement before it was submitted, she did not correct that detail.
Weinstein asked the woman if she was prepared to face perjury charges over this inaccuracy.
The woman said she would, but added that she was unfamiliar with the sworn statement process. “This is the first time I’ve been here. I don’t know how this works,” she said.
The hearing resumes Thursday morning.
This broad's story doesn't add up to me.. You wake next morning you don't know what went down.. your groggy and have back pain.. you find another football player cleaning up and tell him your back hurts.. he feels the knots in your back.. then 45 mins later your letting him consensually bang you out.. After that you get into a friends car and have some total recall type ? happen.. when you see a condom in the car.. Reading this whole story of hers.. I'm thinking maybe this broad.. Just drank way to much got too turnt up.. and did some ? -ish ? with 3 ? that she now really regrets.. especially since what she did got around to a bunch of different people.. But I don't know maybe I'm being to harsh and cynical towards her story... -
"Doesn't remember" ... therefore it was ? .
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Doesn't sound like ? exactly but i don't know. Sounds like she was ? up and they took advantage but was she passed out? Was she actively engaging in sex or kinda just laying there blacked out? And what's up with the dude massaging her back and then she had consensual sex with him the very next day. Did she even know him? Its too much going on.
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Sounds like what goes down in the military every ? day.
Young people getting freedom, drinking entirely too much and having lots of casual sex. -
I always get skeptical when ? get ? and end up getting ? then holler ? later on.
A ? broad who can't hold her liquor and ? men don't mix.
If you "don't remember" I don't see you one could assume she didn't consent.
Backwards ass world some women need to be held accountable for their stupidity and men need to be smarter to in these situations. -
she even banged the guy that cleans up after the party? that guy usually never gets laid.
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i'm glad to see how the woman from the duke lacrosse case has influenced you people into being a bit more skeptical about certain accusations.
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and it really seems like she was just a typical ? ? , and decided it wasn't no fun unless the homies got some. Then she woke up with the "what did i do" feeling, shrugged it off and ? some rando, then people made fun of her to the point that she couldn't take it, and she couldn't just accept it, so in an attempt to 'save face' she claimed she got ? , gang-? , and none of it was her fault.
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i'm glad to see how the woman from the duke lacrosse case has influenced you people into being a bit more skeptical about certain accusations.
I've always been skeptical of ? like this.
Some ? happen similar to this with some baseball players that went to a university near me.
Broad said they ? her and it ended up being revealed later that it wasn't.
The broad evidently got ashamed of her whorish behavior and cried ? and was about to ? up the future of 2-3 guys if I'm not mistaken. -
IMO I think it was ? even if the evidence can be ambiguous we as men should know that if a woman is passed out not to stick our ? in them cuz you will end up in jail. Then being dumb enough to brag about it on twitter led to their downfall. If they had kept quiet and hadn't embarrassed her she probably would've went on with her life. They deserve whatever punishment they get for being dumb.
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IMO I think it was ? even if the evidence can be ambiguous we as men should know that if a woman is passed out not to stick our ? in them cuz you will end up in jail. Then being dumb enough to brag about it on twitter led to their downfall. If they had kept quiet and hadn't embarrassed her she probably would've went on with her life. They deserve whatever punishment they get for being dumb.
Not sure where it said she "was passed out". -
IMO I think it was ? even if the evidence can be ambiguous we as men should know that if a woman is passed out not to stick our ? in them cuz you will end up in jail. Then being dumb enough to brag about it on twitter led to their downfall. If they had kept quiet and hadn't embarrassed her she probably would've went on with her life. They deserve whatever punishment they get for being dumb.
Not sure where it said she "was passed out".
Bro you couldn't read between the lines? If she has no recollection of the night except for snippets I'm sure at one one point she was passed out.
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IMO I think it was ? even if the evidence can be ambiguous we as men should know that if a woman is passed out not to stick our ? in them cuz you will end up in jail. Then being dumb enough to brag about it on twitter led to their downfall. If they had kept quiet and hadn't embarrassed her she probably would've went on with her life. They deserve whatever punishment they get for being dumb.
Not sure where it said she "was passed out".
Bro you couldn't read between the lines? If she has no recollection of the night except for snippets I'm sure at one one point she was passed out.
Not necessarily. I've been real ? up but still not passed out. I still be functioning and if a ? didn't know, she could very well thing I was all good. How we know the ? wasn't just ? up to the point she can't remember but was actually ? and ? ?
Or how we know if she just regrets this ? and is calling ? in hindsight ? -
IMO I think it was ? even if the evidence can be ambiguous we as men should know that if a woman is passed out not to stick our ? in them cuz you will end up in jail. Then being dumb enough to brag about it on twitter led to their downfall. If they had kept quiet and hadn't embarrassed her she probably would've went on with her life. They deserve whatever punishment they get for being dumb.
Not sure where it said she "was passed out".
Bro you couldn't read between the lines? If she has no recollection of the night except for snippets I'm sure at one one point she was passed out.
Not necessarily. I've been real ? up but still not passed out. I still be functioning and if a ? didn't know, she could very well thing I was all good. How we know the ? wasn't just ? up to the point she can't remember but was actually ? and ? ?
Or how we know if she just regrets this ? and is calling ? in hindsight ?
We can only tell how ? she was from her own testimony which probably would be biased but at the end of the only the four of them know the truth. Like I said b4 embarrassing her was what really got them in trouble. She had no intention of reporting it b4 then -
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On Thursday, the woman told the attorney in the Article 32 hearing, Andrew Weinstein, that she would have been "almost happy if I found out nothing happened."
Weinstein also asked the woman further questions about social media messages she published as students began coming forward and talking to NCIS before the woman herself decided to participate completely in the investigation.
Some of the messages, Weinstein suggested, were prompted because she was "upset" that people had been talking to investigators.
"Gloves are off with these n*ggas if you haven't figured it out already," one message read. Another read: "I've never seen so many n*ggas squeal under pressure." And one last message read, "A snitch… that 'ish I don't like," quoting song lyrics and using the slang term for "sh*t."
stop snitchin has gone way to far when the 'victims' are calling people who are on their side, 'snitches' -
In this day and age setting hoes out and running trains is too risky esp with social media. Easy hoe ? ain't worth jail
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sounds like a typical military ? session
maybe they put too much in her cup purposely or not
Still in this day and age you have to know the danger that comes with sleeping with a ? hot girl -
*shoulda went to the military post*
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HAF BAYKED wrote: »*shoulda went to the military post*
yeah, reading things like "typical military ? " and "yoga pants sex orgy parties" and "even the cleanup guy ? ? " really has me feeling some kinda way that i wasn't a part of something like that. -
U ain't gotta ? em tho... Dem hoes be willin.... Thinks back to those days lol
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Lol @ her ? the designated butler the morning after while in pain and the previous night still a blur....
This hoe a hoe -
@Pico_Roscoe , Rivera
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No Pic Of Alleged Smeeze? I Can't Fap To This
