STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — She said she had been sexually assaulted, and she was angry. Very angry.
And the woman didn’t hold back when she phoned Naflan Doole, a political operative, several hours after she alleged he tried to rape and sodomize her in his car in a Willowbrook parking lot on July 25, 2018.
“I’m going to f--- you up. I’m going to f--- your life up. No one’s ever going to hire you,” the woman said, according to her recorded phone call with Doole which prosecutors played for the jury Monday at Doole’s criminal trial. “… Do you think you’re slick with this s---? I’m going to f------ destroy your life. … You thought I was stupid. But you were wrong at the end of the day.”
The woman testified that she became irate because Doole lied to her during the phone call and said nothing had happened.
The defendant told her she had gotten sick after they drank booze in his car and she had passed out, she testified. Doole told her he let her sleep it off in the back of his car, then woke her up, she said.
The woman testified that she was awake the entire time she was in Doole’s car.
“I was angry,” the woman replied, when Assistant District Attorney Amir Fadl asked about her state of mind when she phoned Doole. “I got pretty p----- off with the fact that he was trying to lie to me and make me think I was crazy.”
That explosive phone call and several others were at the heart of the victim’s testimony on Monday as Doole’s trial entered its second week.
Prosecutors allege Doole, 25, a New Springville resident, sodomized and tried to rape the woman in a parking lot at the College of Staten Island after they had consumed alcohol in his car.
In his cross-examination, defense lawyer Mario Romano tried to undermine the woman’s credibility. He focused on some inconsistencies between the woman’s testimony and statements she made to the grand jury and at the hospital after the alleged attack.
The attorney also suggested friends had pressured the woman into making the rape allegations.
In his opening statement last week, Romano said any sexual contact was consensual.
At the time of the alleged attack, Doole was an assistant campaign manager for Charles Fall, a Democrat running for the North Shore Assembly seat. Fall won the election that November.
The alleged victim, then 19, was a volunteer for Fall’s campaign.
Fall fired Doole on learning of the allegations.
The alleged victim testified for about four hours. She was the only witness to take the stand Monday.
Thin and dark-haired, she was garbed in black pants and a black blouse.
She wore a plastic face shield, but not a mask, so jurors and the lawyers could see her face and hear her. Other witnesses have testified that way.
The woman was composed. She spoke in a calm, direct manner throughout, and did not appear overcome with emotion at any point.
At times she drummed her fingers on the witness stand as she waited for a question to be asked.
She sat slightly bent at the waist, leaning toward the microphone in front of her.
On several occasions state Supreme Court Justice Alexander Jeong asked the woman to speak up so the jury could hear her.
The witness testified that she took the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island on July 25, 2018, to work on Fall’s campaign. It was the third or fourth time she had done so.
She met with Doole who said the campaign had just secured an endorsement and the two of them would drink to celebrate.
The woman said she agreed, and they drove around. Each of them drank several small bottles of Ciroc vodka in Doole’s car. She said she got sick at one point and vomited in a paper bag.
She said she told Doole she needed to lie down.
He drove her to the College of Staten Island parking lot near the tennis bubble. It was summer, and there weren’t many cars around, she said.
The witness said she climbed from the front seat into the back seat to rest. She leaned her head against the rear passenger-side door armrest.
The woman said Doole then got into the back seat. When she refused to put her head in his lap, he sexually assaulted her, she testified.
She said Doole had pinned her down onto the seat with one arm as he fondled her beneath her clothes. He then pulled down her pants and had his way with her, she said.
The woman said she told Doole “multiple times” to stop, but he would not.
She said she tried to resist a bit at first, but then “I just sort of gave up.”
Romano challenged her on that point, asking the woman why she didn’t try harder to fight off her alleged assailant, or call for help.
“I just froze,” she said.
Afterward, she said Doole tried to convince her that nothing had happened. He told her she had fallen asleep, she said.
But she said she knew what he did to her.
Shortly thereafter, Doole drove her to meet her boyfriend at the parking lot of the Burlington Coat Factory in Travis.
She said she was crying and at some point thereafter told the man, “He f------ raped me,” referring to Doole.
Over the next few hours, the woman and her boyfriend met with a number of people and went several places, ultimately driving to Manhattan and Central Park.
While there, she telephoned Doole, she said.
According to the phone calls played for the jury, Doole asked the woman several times if she, her boyfriend and he could meet.
“Please, I’m begging you,” Doole said. “We need to know what happened.”
Then, moments later, Doole said, “My life is over.” However, at no time did the defendant admit to any wrongdoing.
Likewise, Doole maintained he had done nothing wrong in two subsequent phone conversations with the woman in which a detective was listening in.
“The story is still the same,” Doole said in a taped call on Aug. 8, 2018. “I wish I could give you some DNA to prove it didn’t happen. It’s ‘he says, she says’… I can’t say I’m sorry for something I didn’t do.”
“We both know you’re lying,” the woman shot back.
As it turned out, the woman had a rape kit performed at Bellevue Hospital in the early morning hours on July 26, 2018.
Several months later, there was a match with Doole’s DNA, said Fadl, the prosecutor, and his co-counsel Assistant District Attorney Lisa Davis.
Under cross-examination, the woman said she didn’t want to go to the hospital after the incident nor did she want to report it to police. She was tired and wanted to go home.
She also said she did not want her father, an extremely religious Muslim, to find out what happened. She said she feared he would send her back to her native country.
The witness acknowledged that she had given conflicting statements as to where Doole got the alcohol they drank. But she did not deny they had consumed vodka.
She also affirmed that there were some inconsistencies between her testimony Monday and what she told the grand jury and hospital staff about actual penetration.
On Monday, she said it had been slight.
Under cross-examination, the witness confirmed a third party had told her to make sure she told police the defendant had forced himself on her.
However, she also said that advice had no bearing on what she told a detective and the grand jury about the episode.
Seeking to dent the witness’ credibility, Romano, the defense lawyer, also homed in on a text the woman sent her boyfriend on July 28.
“You put me in a circle of pressure with your friends,” the woman wrote. “It was telling me if I didn’t, I was f----- and it was my only option and I just had to do it.”
The text referred to having the rape kit taken and reporting the incident to police.
However, under re-direct testimony, the woman said she was told to take those actions to prevent Doole from attacking someone else. She said she was not pressured into making a false statement.
“He used his job to rape me,” she said.
At the conclusion of her testimony, the woman stepped down from the stand and passed several feet away from the defense table where Doole sat.
The woman looked hard at him. He looked back at her.
The trial resumes on Tuesday.
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