Tyson's Accuser Takes the Stand : Trial: She says she struggled but was overwhelmed and raped by the former heavyweight boxing champion July 19.

By EARL GUSTKEY

Jan. 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

INDIANAPOLIS — The young woman who has accused Mike Tyson of raping her described to a jury in vivid detail here Thursday her version of the events of last July 19.

The 18-year-old Rhode Island woman was on the witness stand for 3 hours 10 minutes and was undergoing cross-examination by Tyson’s attorney, Vincent Fuller, when Marion Superior Court Judge Patricia J. Gifford recessed the court at 5:55 p.m.

During the alleged early-morning attack in Room 606 of the Canterbury Hotel here, the woman said she fought back desperately when the former heavyweight boxing champion assaulted her.

“I tried fighting him, but it was like hitting a wall,” she said.

“I punched his arms. . . . He didn’t even feel that. I yelled ‘Get off me! Please stop--get off me!’ but I couldn’t even move because he had his right forearm across my upper chest.

“When he slammed me down on the bed, he said: ‘Don’t fight me.’ He pulled my top off and (then) he pulled both my jams and panties off.”

She then described how Tyson sexually assaulted her with his fingers and said: “I yelled ‘Ow!’ Then I said ‘Please, you’re hurting me,’ and my eyes filled with tears. Then he started laughing at me.

“I told him: ‘Please, I have a future ahead of me, I have college. I can’t have a baby. He just said: ‘So we’ll have a baby.’

“He jammed his penis into my vagina and I yelled ‘Ow!’ again, and I started to cry again. It was excruciating, it felt like he was ripping me apart. While he did it, he said: ‘Don’t fight me, mommy.’ ”

The woman’s voice never broke, although both Gifford and prosecutor Greg Garrison at times asked her to speak more loudly.

She avoided eye contact with Tyson, who is charged with rape, confinement and criminal deviate conduct. If convicted, he faces up to 63 years in prison. He denies the charges and says she consented to sex.

After Garrison’s opening questions relating to her high school and college academic and student government activities, the prosecutor took her through the events of July 18 in Indianapolis. On that day, Tyson and rock singer Johnny Gill appeared at a dance rehearsal for contestants in the Miss Black America pageant, in which the woman was a contestant.

The woman said that Tyson pointed to her and said: “You’re a nice Christian girl, aren’t you?”

Then, she testified, Tyson hugged her and asked if she wanted to go out on a date.

“I said, ‘Sure,’ “she said.

She said she wrote down her hotel phone number and room number for Tyson. She attended Gill’s concert at the Hoosier Dome with other contestants and returned to her hotel, the Omni.

Kycia Johnson, the day’s first witness, was one of two contestants who shared a hotel room with the woman who filed the rape charge. Johnson testified that she answered the phone when Tyson’s limousine driver called at 1:36 a.m. July 19.

Johnson said the woman told Tyson she was in bed and not dressed to go out. Then, she said, the woman changed her mind, agreed to meet Tyson outside the hotel, dressed and left.

Hours later, Johnson said, the woman returned to their room, slammed the door and said: “He’s such a creep. He tried to rape me.”

The Rhode Island woman testified that she was initially afraid to tell anyone what had happened “because no one would believe me.”

She filed the rape charge with the Indianapolis police 26 hours after the alleged attack, after discussing it with her parents, she said.

She said that when Tyson called her, he asked her: “Are you coming out with me?”

“I told him it was late, that maybe I could see him tomorrow, but he said he had to leave the next day. He kept saying: ‘I just want to talk to you.’ He told me there were a lot of parties and we could see the sights in Indianapolis.

“So I got dressed and went outside, saw his limousine and got in. He was in the back seat and he grabbed me by the shoulders, kissed me and I pushed back. I was surprised. He said: ‘Oh, you’re not a city girl, you’re a nice Christian girl.’

“Then he said he had to pick something up at the Canterbury (Tyson’s hotel). We went to the sixth floor, got off the elevator and went to his room. I sat on a chair inside the door, and he went into the bedroom and turned on the TV and talked on the phone for two or three minutes.

“Then he said: ‘Come on in, the TV’s in here.’ I told him I thought we were leaving, and he said: ‘No, come here, I want to talk to you.’

“I went into the bedroom and sat on the bottom corner of the bed so I could see the TV, and he sat at the other end of the bed.”

She said they talked for a short while. “Then he changed. He said: ‘You’re turning me on.’

“Then I told him: ‘I don’t know why you got me up here. I’m not like that. You told me we were going to see the sights.’ ”

At that point, the woman testified, she got up and went into Tyson’s bathroom. When she came out, she found Tyson sitting on the bed, clad only in his underpants. Further, she said, Tyson had pulled back the bedspread.

“I’m going to leave,” she said she told Tyson.

“But he grabbed me and pulled me over and stuck his tongue in my mouth. It was disgusting, and I tried to pull back.”

Later, she said, she was driven back to the Omni by Tyson’s limo driver. The driver, Virginia Foster, is expected to testify in the trial.

Fuller, in cross-examination late in the day, asked the woman about her academic achievements, about a school trip she had once made to Washington and the political figures she had met, such as Sen. Robert Dole and his wife, Elizabeth Dole, and Vice President Dan Quayle.

He seemed to be trying to establish that the woman is mature beyond her 18 years, a woman who has traveled in Europe. It is expected that he will try to convince the jury that the woman knew what was going to happen when she went to Tyson’s room.

Earlier Thursday, in his opening presentation and before the woman had been called, Fuller pointed out that when the woman entered Tyson’s bedroom she sat on the bed, even though there were two chairs and a sofa in the room.

Tyson’s attorney said that there was “no question” that Tyson and the woman had sex, but that she had consented. Consent to sexual intercourse, he told the jury, “can be expressed or implied.”

Fuller also said the woman became angry after having had sex with Tyson because that the boxer would not escort her to the lobby.

“We admit he was rude,” Fuller said.