GLEN RIDGE ACCUSER TAKES WITNESS STAND

GLEN RIDGE ACCUSER TAKES WITNESS STAND
By CHRISTOPHER KILBOURNE
Staff Writer
In a small and childlike voice, a mildly retarded woman testified Wednesday that she did not try to prevent her alleged rape by a group of Glen Ridge boys because she "didn’t want to hurt their feelings."
In her first appearance in open court, the woman, now 21, haltingly but graphically described submitting to a panoply of sexual acts, including penetration with a broomstick, fungo baseball bat, and small stick.
The woman, who has an IQ of 64 and the scholastic abilities of an 8-year-old, maintained her composure throughout most of her two hours of testimony, despite the impassive stares of the four defendants and a packed courtroom straining to hear her every word.
Dressed in a blue-and-red plaid outfit, the tall and heavy-set woman occasionally frowned or pounded a fist on her arm as she struggled to concentrate or recall details of the incident. Under the gentle but persistent prodding of Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Laurino, the woman eventually described all of the significant acts set out in the indictment of the defendants.
Bryant Grober, 21, Christopher Archer, 20, and twins Kevin and Kyle Scherzer, 21, are charged with forcing or coercing the woman, then 17, to submit to the acts. Prosecutors charge that even if no force was used, the defendants knew or should have known that the girl was "mentally defective," and could not legally consent to sex.
The alleged victim is the 19th witness to testify in the trial, now in its ninth week.
The woman’s account differed from the prosecution’s theory of the case in several respects, including the sequence of events and the roles played by some of the 13 boys who were present in the Scherzers' basement that afternoon.
Defense attorneys promised to pick up on those discrepancies when they begin their cross-examination of the woman this morning.
The woman never said that she was forced to perform any of the acts, although she said that Grober’s hands were on top of her head as she performed oral sex on him.
When Laurino later asked whether she had ever heard of the word "force," the woman said she had not. Laurino persisted, asking repeatedly whether she had not, in fact, ever heard or read the word anywhere. The woman appeared flustered, and adamantly responded, "No!"
However, the woman's testimony supported the prosecution's charge that she cannot say no to sex with a friend, and therefore is mentally defective.
"When a friend asks you to do something, have you ever told them no?" Laurino asked. "No," the woman replied.
The prosecutor then asked whether she still considers the defendants to be her friends.
"Sort of," the woman said softly. Asked to explain her answer, she said, "I mean that I still care about them."
Before the woman testified in front of the jury, Superior Court Judge R. Benjamin Cohen conducted a hearing to determine whether she was qualified to be a witness in the case. Cohen ruled that she "quite clearly" was competent to testify after she said that she understood the difference between the truth and a lie, and that people who lie "get in trouble."
After the jury was seated, the woman testified that the March 1, 1989, incident began when she was approached by a group of boys as she was shooting baskets by herself in Carteret Park. She said that Grober convinced her to go to the Scherzers' house by promising her she could go out with Christopher Archer's brother Paul, on whom she reportedly had a crush. Paul Archer, 21, was charged in the case but instead of standing trial has been admitted into the state's Pretrial Intervention Program.
The woman said that she walked to the house with Christopher Archer. "It was like kind of romantic," she said.
She described the basement as "set up like a movie," later explaining that the boys set up chairs around the couch where the action took place.
The boys asked her to masturbate herself, and she did, as the boys said "go further, further, further," she said.
She said Grober told her to perform oral sex on him and she complied. Kyle Scherzer then put vaseline, a plastic bag, and a rubber band over the end of a broomstick and gave it to his brother Kevin, she said. Kevin Scherzer then "stuck it in me," the woman said. Richard Corcoran, who is scheduled to be tried separately, urged Kevin Scherzer to "go further, further, further," she said.
Kyle Scherzer similarly prepared the knob end of a fungo baseball bat -- thinner than a regular bat -- and gave it to Christopher Archer, who "stuffed it up my vagina," the woman said. Corcoran penetrated her with a small stick, she said. The woman then described masturbating and performing oral sex on some of the boys, and allowing some of them to suck her breasts.
The woman said the boys placed their hands on top of one another's as athetic teams do before a game and told her not to tell any one what happened, warning that she would "get in trouble," and they would tell her mother.
She said she then "waited around to see if I could go out with Paul [Archer]." Asked why she waited for him, she said, "Because I thought he might still go out with me." When Laurino asked why she hadn't left before then, she said, "Because I thought they weren't through."
The woman did not look at the defendants as she testified but occasionally smiled over at her sister and a friend in the first row, who said they were there to lend support. The woman only appeared to get upset twice, the first time when Laurino asked how she felt the next day.
"That's embarrassing," she said, as she paused to grimace and bury her face in her hands. "It hurt when I went to the bathroom," she said, finally.
She also became upset when she was asked to identify the defendants in the courtroom. "Do I have to?" she asked Laurino. She stood up to point them out, and then appealed to Laurino in a hoarse whisper, saying again, "Do I have to?"
During a break in the testimony, one defense attorney privately said that the impact of the woman's testimony was "Horrible, if the jury believes it. But there are inconsistencies, as well."
"If she's not damaging, who would be?" said defense attorney Thomas Ford. "This is certainly the high point of their case, and it would appear at this point that there are many problems that will be brought out."
Among the discrepancies between the woman's testimony and the indictment are that it allegedly was Christopher Archer, rather than Grober, who asked her to go to the Scherzers'; that the oral sex with Grober allegedly took place before the woman masturbated herself; and that it allegedly was Christopher Archer, rather than Corcoran, who urged Kevin Scherzer to go further with the broom.
Christine McGoey, a coordinator for the Essex County chapter of the National Organization for Women, said that the testimony showed that the woman "clearly was set up" by the defendants. "We are hearing out her own mouth that she is incapable of giving consent," McGoey said.