By Brian Melley
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — There was no text message that specifically gave Derrick Rose permission to have sex with his ex-girlfriend, but for the NBA star the signs were clear, he testified Friday in a lawsuit that accuses him and two friends of raping the woman.
It started with a morning text message from the woman saying Rose was the reason she “wakes up horny,” including a photo of herself in her nightshirt and continued with other texts about sex throughout the day.
Rose said he surmised that the “horny” text had triggered consent from that point on, and that was only reinforced for him by their sexual history, sex acts she engaged in with him and his personal assistant that night at his house and an invite hours later to her apartment.
“I was assuming that all of us going over there that she wanted to have sex with all of us,” Rose testified in a matter-a-fact demeanor.
His description of the incident differed dramatically from the woman’s testimony, which lasted a day and a half in Los Angeles federal court.
The 30-year-old woman denied having sex earlier in the evening at Rose’s Beverly Hills mansion, though her testimony was clouded by her claims that she blacked out and could only piece together the evening through short “flashes” of memory and by reviewing a flurry of text messages she apparently was able to send despite being drunk and, possibly, drugged.
At the end of testimony, Rose’s lawyer asked a judge to declare a mistrial because of a profane text message that he said the woman’s lawyers had failed to reveal until Friday.
The judge said he would take the issue up Tuesday morning before the Knicks point guard is scheduled to resume testimony. The judge ordered Rose to return to the stand even if it means missing a preseason game the night before in New York.
Rose, 28, was called to the stand by the plaintiff’s lawyer as a hostile witness to help make the plaintiff’s case that the woman never gave consent to have sex with him and his longtime friends and assistants, Randall Hampton and Ryan Allen.
Consent is the main issue for the jury of six women and two men. The men, all friends since adolescence in Chicago, have denied the allegations and said the woman consented.
The Associated Press is not naming the woman because it generally does not identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault.
Rose said the only time the woman said, “Stop” was after she let them in her apartment and they all headed for the bedroom together.
“She told us, ‘One at a time,’” he said. He and Hampton waited on the sofa while Allen was inside.
The woman testified she never let the men in her place and remembers waking to see them all in her bedroom. She recalled Allen on top of her at one point and, at another, Rose pulling her to the side of the bed as she tried to roll off.
Rose said he never received any text from the woman telling him she wanted to have sex with him and the two others. But he had assumed from what had transpired and the fact she had never told him no.
“In my mind, she consented every time we had sex,” he said. “Why wouldn’t she do it that time?”
Attorney Waukeen McCoy suggested Rose had no remorse about the night.
“I’m sensitive to it,” Rose replied, but added, “I feel I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Rose hadn’t seen the woman since breaking up months earlier, but invited her over for drinks that night. She came with a friend and after a shot or two of tequila she became sexually aggressive, which turned him off.
Rose retreated to his room, where he rebuffed further advances until a friend removed her from the room.
About 20 minutes later, he said he walked outside and saw Hampton having sex with her by the side of the pool, and she pulled Rose over to join them, though he broke away and returned to his room.
Rose said the woman was acting a bit abnormally, but he didn’t think she was drunk.
Rose said he once had feelings for the woman and thought they had a bond. He was once asked if he thought she was after his money.
“Not at that time,” he said.
Defense lawyers have described her as a gold digger and suggested she had sued for money.
She denied that saying: “I didn’t wish him any harm, I wanted him to be accountable.”
The woman didn’t report the incident to police until she filed suit more than two years later. Los Angeles police still have an open investigation.
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