Victim testifies about rape Maine woman, 72, describes her suffering

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BANGOR – A 72-year-old woman who was raped in her home in rural Edinburg after attending a Saturday evening Mass last June told jurors Monday that she has had to sell her home and still sleeps on the couch because she’s afraid to go to bed.

It was a morning of intensely emotional testimony at the Penobscot County Superior Courthouse on Monday as the rape trial of 34-year-old Dennis Sirois of Howland got under way. He is charged with Class A gross sexual assault and is incarcerated at Penobscot County Jail.

The small-framed woman was the first witness to take the stand, and she cried as she told the courtroom about the June 10, 2000, attack.

After Mass, a bite to eat at a local diner and a brief visit with her brother-in-law, the woman said, she was at home peeling a pear at about 9 p.m. when she heard a knock at the door.

When she answered the knock, a man wearing an army-green jacket with mosquito netting covering his face forced his way inside, switched off the entryway light and pushed her to the bedroom at the back of the house.

“I was so afraid,” the woman told jurors. “I thought he was going to kill me. I just kept praying to God for forgiveness. It’s all I could do.”

She said her attacker forced her to turn around so that she couldn’t see him and then pushed her face down onto her bed where he raped her.

A devout Catholic, the victim kept praying to St. Teresa and St. Mary, whose statues and pictures she had in her bedroom.

“I just kept thinking this can’t be happening. They can’t let this happen,” she said.

After the attack, the victim suffered a heart attack while in the hospital undergoing a rape protocol exam. She was hospitalized for five days, she testified.

After she left the hospital, she went to a motel for a few days and then to Washington state to stay with family.

She has not returned to her Edinburg home since the attack, but bought another house in the area.

“I don’t want [the house],” she said quietly.

Under questioning by assistant District Attorney Alice Clifford, the woman said she still suffers from the effects of the attack. Though her new home has bedrooms on the second floor, she sleeps on the sofa in the living room. Before she purchased a sofa for her new home, she slept on mats on the floor, she said.

“I have to be able to see everything. I’ve tried to sleep upstairs, but I just can’t do it. I’m afraid,” she told the courtroom.

She also has been unable to return to the church that she used to attend and has not been back to the 95er Diner where she went each Saturday night after Mass.

“I’ve had friends tell me they’d go with me, but I just can’t. Not yet,” she said. “The people at the diner were like my family. I went to their Christmas parties and such. I knew them very well.”

The woman testified that Sirois’ brother Danny did work around the yard for her and sometimes his brothers helped him. She testified that on the day before the attack, Danny and Dennis Sirois were spreading gravel in her yard.

Dennis Sirois, dressed in a blue button-down shirt and bluejeans, listened attentively to the testimony and conferred often with his attorney.

Defense attorney Jacqueline Gomes of Lincoln tried to point out discrepancies between the statements the victim gave to police immediately after the attack and her testimony Monday.

Gomes also questioned Sirois’ father, Julien Sirois, who testified that Dennis Sirois arrived home at 9 p.m. the night of the attack. He said he knew the time for sure because his favorite program, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” was just beginning.

The victim testified under cross-examination by Gomes that she was hesitant to tell police that she believed that her attacker was either Danny or Dennis Sirois because she was concerned about harming the Sirois family.

Testimony indicated that the two Sirois brothers have a similar build. Both men are short and stocky, and they have a slight French accent, according to testimony from the victim and Maine State Police Detective Brian Strout.

Police obtained DNA samples from Dennis and Danny Sirois as well as from another brother who lived in the area.

The DNA from the blood sample taken from Dennis Sirois matched the DNA from semen taken from the victim, according to Strout’s testimony, and at that point he was arrested.

At the time of the attack, Sirois was on probation for an armed robbery in 1991 of a Milford convenience store. He was sentenced in 1991 to 20 years in prison with all but 15 years suspended. He was released on probation nine years later.

After his arrest for the June attack in Edinburg, the court revoked Sirois’ probation and he now is serving the five-year suspended portion of his sentence. He could face 40 years in prison if convicted of the current charge.

Testimony is scheduled to continue on Tuesday.