A Boston police officer who has accused another officer of raping her, then stalking her, testified today that her alleged attacker squeezed her throat and threatened her life during the assault.
The officer, whose name is being withheld by the Globe because the newspaper does not identify those who say they were sexual assaulted, testified in excruciating detail about the alleged rape before a Dorchester District Court judge as she sought to extend a restraining order against him.
In a soft voice, the petite woman told Judge David Weingarten that she fears the patrolman, a sniper in the department's SWAT team, because he had threatened to shoot her husband and "he has no qualms about killing people."
The accused officer stood only 10 feet away, dressed in a gray pin-stripe suit, his arms folded in front of him. The Globe is withholding his name because he not been officially charged with a crime. He did not testify today.
In the courtroom were at least half a dozen officers from the special operations division, an elite unit that includes the department's SWAT team and motorcycle squad.
During the tense, 90-minute hearing, the female officer repeatedly was asked to speak up as she tried to describe what happened on Aug. 25, when she said she joined her alleged attacker and another officer for a trip to Farmington, Conn. for a shooting competition.
After a night of heavy drinking, the three officers went back to their hotel, where they shared a room.
It was there that the female officer said she was raped.
"He grabbed my throat and squeezed really hard," she said. "I remember thinking I couldn't breathe."
He raped her twice that night, she said, as the other officer lay passed out on the floor.
The next day, she said, he demanded sex again and out of fear for her and her husband's life, she said she acquiesced. She said she was intimidated into having sex with him three more times during the next month.
Last week, after she fainted during a training, she learned she was pregnant, she testified.
On Thursday, she said she was called in by the department's internal affairs division about the incident.
"They came to her," her lawyer, John Swomley said, after the hearing. "She did not go to them."
The officer said a sergeant-detective in the domestic violence division told her not to file a restraining order. A cruiser has been assigned to guard her apartment, Swomley said, but he said he suspects members of the department's internal affairs division have been reporting her whereabouts to the accused officer.
After the hearing, Swomley recanted his statement, saying he misspoke. He said that the sergeant-detective in the domestic violence unit was giving information about his client's actions to the accused officer's lawyer, Thomas Drechsler.
Drechsler said his client has no power over superior officers.
"Sergeant detectives don't usually do what patrol officers tell them to do," he said.
After the hearing, Drechsler, standing next to his client, addressed reporters as the accused officer looked on calmly.
"He has, will and continues to deny the allegations," Drechsler said.
The restraining order was extended to next Monday, when the hearing will be continued.
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