Victim testifies in sex assault trial

A woman handed her roommates a note telling them to call 911 on a man, she says

HILO » A 24-year-old Korean exchange student who says she was sexually assaulted at knifepoint in 2006 testified in court this week that she pretended to be an "easy girl" to fool her attacker.

She agreed to have sex with him, but only if they returned to her apartment near the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

While at the apartment, she wrote a note telling her roommates to call police.

Donovan Roque, 24, is charged with sexual assault, kidnapping and terroristic threatening in connection with the Dec. 8, 2006, events.

Deputy Public Defender Michael Ebesugawa told the jury in an opening statement that the alleged victim was a "mystery woman" who knocked on Roque's car door at an intersection at night, said she was lost and agreed to have sex with him.

Ebesugawa denied that Roque threatened her with a knife.

Taking the witness stand Wednesday, the woman said she had been in Hilo four months when she chose an unfamiliar route for an exercise walk on a Friday night.

Lost, she knocked on Roque's car door. He offered her a ride to her apartment but instead stopped on a dead-end street with no houses. She tried to walk away, but he came at her from behind with a knife in his right hand, she said. Shown two knives found in Roque's possession, she identified one.

The young woman testified that she screamed and struggled, then threatened, "If you kill me, I'm going to kill you."

She explained in court that she was thinking of the saying, "An eye for an eye."

She said she told him to put down the knife if he wanted to have sex with her, and he did so. He put his hand into her underpants and felt her, she said. "It was so painful," she said.

She told him she was afraid of AIDS and that he had to take her to her apartment so she could get a condom, she said.

While he waited in her bedroom, she slipped into the living room, she said. Talking to her roommates in a loud voice about a birthday party, she simultaneously gave them a note telling them to call police, who arrived and arrested Roque.

The trial resumes Tuesday.