The jury deliberates on the fate of the accused rapist

Courts Webstock

MEDIA COURT — Jury deliberations began Wednesday in the trial of a Darby Township man accused of raping his female colleague during a break in June 2021.

Anthony D. Waters Jr., 27, is also charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault and indecent assault.

Jurors heard from the alleged victim, who described how she met Waters after working as an overnight stock clerk at the Darby Walmart at 13 S. MacDade Blvd. started to work. She said they chatted and smoked marijuana together during breaks, usually behind the Pep Boys nearby.

During one of those breaks, she said Waters kissed her and then pulled out his penis. The alleged victim said she told Waters at the time that sex wasn’t her thing, but offered to give him a hand job, which he declined. There was no hostility on her part after that interaction, the alleged victim said.

At their next break together on June 22, she said Waters led her to the loading docks of a nearby Foreman Mills, where there was another attempted assault.

“I told him I’m not doing this, it’s not my thing,” she told Assistant District Attorney Beth Ramos. “I suggested I use my hand again. He said that wouldn’t work. I told him that it wasn’t my thing, sex wasn’t my thing, and he didn’t say anything. He just turned me around (and made an attack).

She said she told him several times that she wasn’t happy with what he was doing, but he didn’t stop until a truck arrived at the loading dock.

Then the two pulled up their pants and got back to work, she said, but she was desperate. In later text messages read to jurors, the alleged victim repeated that she told Waters she didn’t want to have sex, but he ignored her and forced it.

Waters allegedly said in those texts, “This was my fault.”

He also apologized for his selfishness. The alleged victim had also told Waters in text messages that she was bleeding and said she wiped herself and found blood later that day.

But the sexual assault nurse who conducted an examination of the alleged victim on June 24 told defense attorney Paige Benedetto that she found no injuries to the woman’s sexual organs and noted that the alleged victim had been tamponed Taylor Hospital because she was on her period at the time.

The nurse said she took several swabs from the victim, which were sent for DNA testing. Ramos read out a stipulation that if the case went to trial, a forensic scientist would testify that there was insufficient material to test for male DNA. However, this does not mean that sexual contact did not take place.

Waters did not testify and Benedetto only called his mother, who said he grew up around women and that his greatest personality trait was peacefulness.

Benedetto concluded by arguing that the alleged victim never actually said “no” to Waters and that it was clear from the texts that he was confused by her reaction. At one point, he texted her that he couldn’t see what she was feeling in her face, Bendetto noted.

Benedetto also argued that Waters and the alleged victim were more than just work colleagues and that they went to Foreman Mills together that day for privacy reasons rather than their usual pastime.

“They wanted to change the location because they wanted to change the action,” she said. “They had to go to a more secluded place because they wanted to have sex. If they just kept smoking weed, they would have stayed in exactly the same place.”

However, Ramos said the alleged victim repeatedly told Waters “no.”

Ramos noted that she had told him that she did not feel comfortable having sex, but the alleged victim said it was Waters’ idea to go to the loading dock at Foreman Mills that day because he would ignore her bodily autonomy and do so would do what he wanted.

“‘You told me this wasn’t your thing, but when I put my hand on you, I thought you felt insecure,'” Ramos read from the lyrics. “Really? Is this what we call consensual sex, or is it a big misunderstanding? I put my hand inside you and you were unsure, so I decided to have sex with you? Who does that? “

Ramos said the mantra “no means no” is something we can all respect and appreciate, and the alleged victim here expected Waters to do the same, but he didn’t. She noted that he was the first to admit this with a text that said, “This was my fault” and that his reference to being “selfish” was an admission that he had overstepped the woman’s own boundaries, to satisfy his desires.

Significantly, Waters says nothing about a “misunderstanding” or anything that suggests the alleged victim said something that he misinterpreted in the texts as something else, Ramos said. Instead, he admits that she told him sex wasn’t her thing, suggesting that he knew her limits and ignored her.