A massage therapist friend of the woman accusing Derrick Rose of rape testified Thursday that one of the NBA star’s co-defendants ordered her to strip hours before the alleged assault and then kicked her out of the athlete’s house when she refused.
Jessica “Kendra” Groff, who became friends with Rose’s accuser in August 2012, said she was in the hallway outside of the New York Knicks guard’s room during a small gathering at the house when a spat erupted with longtime Rose buddy Ryan Allen.
Groff said she recalled Allen “telling me to take off my clothes.” When she refused, she testified, Allen said, “Why don’t you just leave.”
Rose’s accuser and Groff left the Beverly Hills mansion in a taxi, which dropped the women off at their respective homes, she told the eight-member civil jury.
Groff, 31, said she saw no sex between the plaintiff and any of the defendants at the house party, describing her friend as “really drunk” when they left.
But the three men have testified that their accuser was acting sexually aggressive during the party and later at her downtown Los Angeles apartment, where the alleged assault took place.
The 30-year-old woman at the center of the trial playing out in Los Angeles federal court is suing Rose, Allen and Randy Hampton for $21.5 million for allegedly drugging and gang raping her.
The defendants deny the allegations, claiming the woman invited them to her home where the sexual contact was entirely consensual.
The accuser has said that she was so intoxicated that she has only “flashes” of memory of the alleged rape. She contends she did not invite the men to her residence and has no memory of how the three got into her building.
However, Rose and his friends testified that the woman pushed herself on them and insisted through texts and phone calls that they drive across town for more sex in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 27, 2013.
When they arrived, the defendants said, the woman — whom Rose described as a frequent sex partner during their 18-month relationship — opened the door to her building and told the men to come to her bedroom “one at a time.”
The accuser claims she could have been drugged at the party and was “blacked out” by the time she got home. But the defendants countered that she was sober and enthusiastic during their various encounters.
The lawsuit was filed in 2015, two years after the alleged rape, and police were notified around the same time.
The plaintiff told the jury that she waited two years to file suit because she felt ashamed and embarrassed of what happened and was afraid her family would find out. She also said she didn’t want to make trouble for Rose, who told jurors that he had broken up with her about a month prior to the alleged assault.
The Los Angeles Police Department has confirmed that they are looking into the woman’s allegations, but no criminal charges have been filed.
In a twist Wednesday, the court day began with news that an LAPD detective who was part of the team investigating the Rose rape allegation had apparently committed suicide.
Nadine Hernandez, 44, was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest around 2:45 p.m. Tuesday in a home in Whittier, police said.
The judge said the central issue in the trial is whether consent was given, and a lawyer for the plaintiff has repeatedly tried to show that she was too intoxicated to knowingly agree to sex with Rose and his friends.
The trial resumes Friday with the plaintiff’s roommate on the stand.
–City News Service