Eastport woman describes sex assault to jury

MACHIAS – An Eastport woman was in tears at times Tuesday as she described the night she says she was attacked by a Pleasant Point man facing his third sexual assault charge in 15 years.

As testimony got under way Tuesday, the attorney for Richard Bassett, 35, stressed that the sexual encounter with the 20-year-old woman was consensual and that hours passed before the woman claimed she had been assaulted.

Bassett’s Superior Court trial is being heard by a jury of eight men and six women.

The woman testified that she had gone to the Pleasant Point apartment of her boyfriend, Stephen Francis, on New Year’s Eve, and she testified that she had been drinking. She said she had hitchhiked from Eastport to a friend’s house but left shortly on foot with a friend. They arrived at her boyfriend’s apartment before midnight.

Francis was home alone when she arrived, and she testified that she drank some beer, then some coffee brandy. She said a friend of Francis’, Cecil Stanley, arrived around 3 a.m. Jan. 1. She said Stanley called some other people and that shortly afterward Bassett and two other men showed up.

The woman said Stanley passed out in the living room and that two of the other men left. She said that she, Bassett and Francis decided to get more beer.

She said Francis went into the living room to put his shoes on, but that he passed out on the floor behind the couch. She went into the living room, lay down on the floor and went to sleep.

She said that she awoke and felt as if she were being smothered, with Bassett on top of her.

At first, she testified, she was able get away from him. She said she ran up some stairs, but sprained her ankle in the process. She said she entered a bedroom and wrapped herself in a blanket. Bassett followed her into the bedroom.

She said she continued to push him away. Then, she said, she started to scream.

Bassett, she said, put his hand over her mouth and told her to “shut … up.”

The woman said she continued to struggle and told him, “Why don’t you get … out of here, nobody likes you.”

She testified that Bassett left, and she lay down next to her boyfriend.

At around 3 p.m. Jan. 1, she said, the telephone rang. When she answered, it was Bassett, who asked her to “come over” and visit him. She said she hung up on him.

About the same time, she said, Francis and Stanley awoke, and she told them what had happened. She called police around 6 p.m. She testified that she did not tell the police about everything that had happened because she was “embarrassed.”

During cross-examination Tuesday, Bassett’s attorney, Jeffrey Toothaker of Ellsworth, tried to focus the jury’s attention on the fact that the woman had described a struggle that allegedly went on just a few feet from where her boyfriend and another man were sleeping.

Toothaker also focused on the amount of alcohol the woman had consumed and whether she was drunk. He also stressed that her screams had not awakened the men in the apartment. The woman told the attorney that the two sleeping men were “wasted” and that was why they had not awakened.

Toothaker questioned why the woman had waited so long to call police. He also questioned her about why she had not punched or kicked Bassett during the struggle.

The woman said she couldn’t kick him because he was on her legs most of the time. She also said she was scared and was just trying to get away from him. Toothaker also questioned why she did not go to the hospital until two days after the incident.

During the afternoon, defense witness Bertha Stanley, Bassett’s cousin, was allowed to testify with the jury out of the room even though the state had not yet rested.

Toothaker explained that Stanley was nine months pregnant and scheduled for a Caesarean section today.

She testified that Bassett arrived at her apartment after the alleged incident and said he had had consensual sex with a friend’s girlfriend. She said Bassett claimed that the woman had been “hitting on him.” She described the woman as a “weird head case.”

Stanley also testified that Bassett called the woman from her house and had what she described as a friendly conversation.

She claimed that during the telephone conversation she overheard Bassett say, “Don’t worry, I won’t say nothing.” She said she believed he was talking with the woman who later brought charges against him.

Under cross-examination by assistant District Attorney Paul Cavanaugh, Stanley said she could not confirm whom Bassett had spoken with on the phone nor did she hear the other end of the conversation.

Superior Court Judge E. Allen Hunter said he would rule today on whether Stanley’s hearsay testimony would be admissible.

This is not the first time Bassett has been charged with sexual assault. In 1987, he was convicted of attempted gross sexual assault. In 1989, when he was 23, he and his juvenile brother were found guilty of a sexual attack on a 20-year-old college student as she worked on the second floor of the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s vocational education building at Pleasant Point.