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Alleged Rape Cop: Accuser Was Only Wearing Bra, Rubbed Her Butt Against Him

John Del Signore

Published May 10, 2011

Modified Sep 9, 2011

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John Del Signore

Published May 10, 2011

Modified Sep 9, 2011

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The NYPD officer accused of raping an intoxicated young woman in her East Village apartment spoke about that night for the first time yesterday, testifying in open court that the woman tried to seduce him, and that he chivalrously turned her down. On his fourth trip back to her apartment, Officer Kenneth Moreno says he found the woman stripped down to her bra, and that even though she'd spent hours throwing up in the bathroom, she was practically begging for sex.

"She told me to come over to the bed," Moreno told the jury, CBS 2 reports. "I said ‘I’m good where I’m at.’ She only had a pink bra on. She came over to me and asked me if I liked her. She tried to kiss me, but I smelled the alcohol. I said ‘you don’t like me.’ She got upset. I kissed her forehead. She took my hand and put it on her stomach and turned so my hand was on her lower back. She started moving her buttocks around my groin area. It was getting crazy. This was totally unexpected."

The unidentified woman says she passed out but awoke to being raped, but was so inebriated she was essentially paralyzed. Lawyers for Moreno and his partner Franklin Mata have tried to establish that she was not so drunk that she couldn't have said no, while also maintaining that Moreno did not have sex with her. "She asked me if I liked her," Moreno, 43, testified. "I said I liked her. Then she kissed me. I could smell the alcohol on her breath, but I could smell the vomit. She said, 'You don't like me. You don't like me.' "

Moreno claims the groin rubbing lasted just two seconds. "I didn't see this coming," Moreno told the jury. "I kinda pushed her away. I told her, 'There's another time for this. Not today. There's another time for this . . . We're not doing this.' " Moreno claims he only returned to the apartment so many times because the woman begged him, and under cross examination yesterday he admitted to placing that fake 911 call about a homeless man blocking a nearby building, so that he'd have an excuse to return. And he admitted that he committed official misconduct by not letting supervisors know of his whereabouts.

But Mata's testimony last week raises questions about Moreno's account. Mata says he fell asleep on the couch for a half hour, during which time Moreno was in the woman's bedroom. We suppose they were in there discussing the migratory patterns of exotic songbirds? Or was he just serenading her with hair metal classics of the '80s? Mata claims doesn't know, and the jury is being asked to believe that when his partner awoke him after spending a 30 minutes in the bedroom of a supposedly "flirtatious" drunk woman, he never asked what happened.

According to CBS 2, Assistant District Attorney Coleen Balbert asked Mata: “You said in direct examination Ken did not commit any crimes. But isn’t it true you were asleep and didn’t know what was happening in that bedroom?” Mata: “I know Ken. Ken wouldn’t do something like that.” Balbert: “But he would commit a crime like making a false 911 call.”
Mata: “I didn’t know it was fake.”

Update (9/9/11): Gothamist has published a long-form feature about the Rape Cop case, written by one of the jurors. It takes you behind the scenes during their deliberations, and explains how they came to their controversial verdict. Buy it today as a PDF or on Kindle.

Tagged

east village

franklin mata

kenneth moreno

rape cop

rape cop trial

John Del Signore

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Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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