A former Northwestern University student testified Wednesday that she was sexually assaulted in her dorm room by a man she'd allowed to sleep on her floor.
The woman was the first to take the witness stand at the trial of Pablo Herrera of West Chicago, who is accused of sexually assaulting her six years ago at Foster-Walker Residence Hall on the Evanston campus.
According to prosecutors and testimony, Herrera and the woman made plans to meet in Chicago, where they drank together at several bars before she agreed to let him spend the night on her dorm room floor. She testified that she woke up to find her pants and underwear pulled down and Herrera assaulting her.
"I didn't know what was going on," the woman testified as she dabbed tears from her eyes with a tissue. "I was so confused. I was trying in those split seconds to figure out what was going on."
She said that after telling Herrera several times to stop, he finally did, and also apologized.
"He told me I was lucky because some of his friends wouldn't have stopped," said the woman, who was then 20. "I was trying to process what had just happened."
Herrera's attorney, Domingo Vargas, declined to make an opening statement at the trial. But in cross-examining the woman, he challenged her recollections and questioned her actions before and after the alleged assault.
"Isn't it true you insisted he stay at the dorm with you?" Vargas asked the woman. "You didn't call 911 (after the alleged assault)? You didn't call any family or friends to tell them what had happened, right?"
The woman testified that after walking Herrera out of the dorm the next morning and pointing him toward the "L" station, "I told myself I wasn't going to tell anyone, that I'd eventually forget it. I didn't want to acknowledge it."
But she said a short time later she Googled the phrase "How do I know if I had been raped?"
"I thought it had to be like on TV, being dragged by your hair into an alley, very violent," she testified.
She did report the alleged assault in the following week, leading to the arrest of Herrera, now 33. He's been free on bond during his long wait for a trial.
Prosecutor Pamela Stratigakis said the case "is about the defendant preying on an innocent victim."
She said the two met on a Metra platform, discovered they'd attended the same church and school, and communicated over social media for several months before the alleged assault.
But Stratigakis contended that their conversations over social media were part of Herrera's plan to "groom" the woman for the sexual assault and that Herrera introduced himself to her using a fake name, which he also used on Facebook.
Herrera faces more than 20 years in prison if found guilty on all charges.
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