An attorney for former River Rats player Robert Hughes said today in an Albany County court his client did indeed have sexual contact with a Bethlehem woman, but characterized the encounter as consensual and not the sexual assault alleged by prosecutors.
Frankly, they did what couples on a one-night stand do. It’s not more than that, it’s not less than that, Robert Molloy said.
Molloy and Albany County Assistant District Attorney Shannon Sarfoh delivered opening statements to jurors today in the trial of Hughes, who stands charged with committing a criminal sex act in the first and third degrees.
He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
The two sides agreed on some details. Hughes met the then-39-year-old woman at My Place, a sports bar and restaurant on Delaware Avenue in Delmar, on the evening of October 18, 2008. The woman was there with friends, but sat next to Hughes in the bar. The two struck up a conversation, and when her friends left she elected to stay.
What happened next is in dispute. Prosecutors allege Hughes, then 20, left with the woman and returned to his apartment on Elm Street, where he sodomized her while she was unable to give consent due to being disoriented after a night of drinking, which may have interacted with her prescribed antidepressant drugs.
Sarfoh said the alleged victim’s memory of the night is incomplete.
`There’s a block of time she doesn’t recall,` she said to the jury. `[The victim] can’t come in here and tell you exactly what happened.`
Sarfoh said testimony and physical evidence, including DNA recovered from the victim the day after the alleged attack, will fill in those blanks.
`That, ultimately, is the proof in this case,` she said.
The defense’s version of events was a departure to what Hughes had originally told investigators, when he denied any sexual contact. Molloy explained his client’s `inaccurate statement` to police as a way to defer the shame of a one night stand with a woman nearly twice his age and also avoid harming his sports career.
Molloy also called into question the idea the woman was truly intoxicated, saying they had not been drinking heavily, and said her lapse of memory might be her way to cover guilt.
`Embarrassment, shame, remorse? I suspect all three were very much at work,` he said.
The jury`half men, half women`heard testimony from Dr. Timothy Barcomb of Albany Medical Center, who conducted an examination of the victim when she came to the hospital, and also from Hughes’s former roommate and teammate, Harrison Reed.
Reed, a resident of Ontario who now plays for the Lake Erie Monsters, had just begun living with Hughes before the alleged incident, and testified he had seen the woman slumped against a car tire in the parking lot of the apartment complex on the night of the incident when he returned from an away game. Hughes was on the injury list at the time and did not travel.
Reed went on to say the woman knocked on the door to the apartment later that night asking for Hughes, and also asking where the hotel desk was.
`I thought she was drunk when I had seen her,` he said. `She was disoriented and just didn’t seem normal.`
Reed also testified Hughes had contacted him through Facebook the week before the trial and `said something to the effect he didn’t want me to come,` though Reed said he could not recall the exact wording.
He also said he was reluctant to get involved in the trial.
`I work in the states to play hockey, and I was uneasy about not doing it [testifying] then crossing the border and having trouble,` he said.
Molloy suggested Bethlehem police detectives and the district attorney had used this to force Reed to appear, an assertion he denied.
Sarfoh asked Reed if he had anything against Hughes.
`No, I don’t have anything against Bobby,` he said.
The trial will continue tomorrow morning.“
