An 18-year-old University of Hawaii at Manoa student says she went over to a friend’s dorm room after a night of partying last fall expecting she might kiss and cuddle with him and possibly spend the night.
But after kissing on his bed for a few minutes, she testified in Circuit Court on Monday, Tyler Strong forced himself on her and raped her amid her repeated protests to stop.
Strong, 19, is charged with two counts of first-degree sex assault and one count of third-degree sex assault for the alleged incident Sept. 21 in his Johnson Hall dorm room.
"Right when the kissing started getting, like, more intense, I think, he pulled me underneath him, like, really fast," the woman testified. "He was between my legs, and, like, his body pressure was just on me and I felt gross."
She said she couldn’t move.
"I was crying very, very obviously — a lot, just a lot of crying," she recalled through tears. "I remember … I told him, like, six times to stop, and, like, I don’t know why six stands out, but it does. I told him six times to stop, and then he finally did after the sixth time."
She was one of four witnesses to take the stand for the prosecution Monday. The jury trial is scheduled to resume Wednesday.
The woman said she and Strong had become close friends after meeting during freshman orientation last fall.
"Kind of flirty but just friends," she said.
She said they would see each other "every two to three days," to hang out or grab lunch, typically with other friends.
When Strong got locked out of his dorm room one night in August, he ended up sleeping in her dorm room in Mokihana Tower, which is about a five-minute walk away from Johnson Hall.
That night, she said, they only kissed, and she decided afterward that they should just be friends.
"It wasn’t really meant to happen. It was just, like, we both were lonely or something," she said, adding that she started having feelings for another guy.
"I had told him about this guy I was going to start seeing, you know, and he got upset," she said.
She and Strong later had a conversation over text message, agreeing to be "besties," or best friends.
"It just basically says we are attracted to each other, sure, but, um, we’re better as best friends," she said of the text exchange with Strong. "We didn’t end up hanging out for a little bit after that, but we wanted to move forward and eventually become friends again."
On the night of Sept. 20, a Saturday, she said, she and the guy she was dating at the time got into a "mean fight." She and her friends drank vodka and rum drinks before going to Strong’s dorm room around 10 p.m. to hang out.
She left around midnight and went back to her dorm, where she and her friends continued drinking.
"I was probably really buzzed at that point," she said, estimating she had around six drinks that night.
Strong began texting her, "begging me to come over," she said.
"Baby I wanna give it to you come back," he texted her, according to screenshots of her cellphone submitted as evidence. "Baby hurry," he wrote.
She went over about 5 a.m., dressed in her "PJ’s" — a tank top and gymnastic shorts.
"I was pretty buzzed. … I was still intoxicated to an extent," she said.
When asked what she thought was going to happen in his room, she said, "Kissing and cuddling was probably a possibility for that night. … It was kind of like, like a revenge thing," she said, referring to her fight earlier that night with the guy she was dating.
She said she initially felt comfortable kissing and lying next to Strong on his bed.
"I mean, I went over there with the intent that that could happen. I knew, like, things had happened in the past. I was angry," she said.
But she panicked when he got on top of her, and she asked him to slow down.
"He was just telling me, ‘Baby, relax,’" she said. "I thought I knew him really well, but this was like, it was like something happening, there was like a look in his eye or something. … It sounds repetitive, but every time I said no, he would just tell me to relax."
When she could move, she said, she grabbed her phone and keys and ran out of the building. "I just laid in the grass," she said.
She called a friend and told her what had happened. Her friend arrived, followed by UH campus security and police.
She said at first she didn’t want to report the assault to authorities.
"I’ve had to tell this story, like, what feels like a million times. And it’s never easy. It’s the same every time," she said, crying. "Who would want to be called a liar and have to prove something they wished never happened?"
She was taken by police to a hospital, then to speak with a detective.
Asked how she’s been affected by the incident, she said, "I don’t trust anyone. He was a close friend. … I just don’t go to parties ’cause I’m afraid, because if a friend could do this, like, why not a stranger?"
