Woman: Officer raped her, then came to hospital

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - March 22, 2010

The 22-year-old woman said she recalled seeing officer Marcus Huffman in the hours after the alleged rape, but told the jury that she could not remember how long he was there or anything else about the encounter.

"I thought it was him that I was with," she said. "I thought it was him I had got in the car with."

Prosecutors allege that Huffman, who is charged with first-degree sexual assault in Providence Superior Court, raped the woman in the bathroom of a deserted police substation after offering her a ride outside a gay nightclub where she had been turned away for being too drunk.

Prosecutor Maureen Keough asked the woman if she had given any indication that she wanted to have sex with Huffman, and she said, "No." She testified that she identifies herself as a lesbian.

The woman wept as she saw a photograph of the bathroom where she says the rape happened in March 2007. The jury also saw surveillance footage that the woman said showed her entering the building with Huffman - and then leaving alone - and pictures of the clothing the woman said she had been wearing that night.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they were victims of sex crimes.

The woman said she was familiar with the building because she used to deal drugs in the area.

She testified last week that she passed out and woke up in a bathroom stall with her pants undone and her undergarments removed. She then walked to her aunt's house nearby and was taken to the hospital.

Huffman has been suspended without pay from the department.

Huffman's lawyer, Robert Caron, did not give an opening statement to the jury, but tried to seize on apparent inconsistencies in the woman's memory. He said she told hospital staff that she had woken up in Huffman's car with her clothes off - a statement she could not recall making.

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