Trauma caused woman to delay accusing Fort Worth fighter of sexual assault, she testifies
Nearly a week passed before a woman told anyone that a mixed martial arts fighter sexually assaulted her and her friend.
Abdul Razak Alhassan is accused of raping the two women in one of their homes in Saginaw. His trial on two counts of sexual assault began Tuesday in a Tarrant County courtroom.
Alhassan allegedly brought the women home from the Varsity Tavern in Fort Worth, where was working as a bouncer in March 2018. Alhassan, 34, who is from Ghana, has competed professionally as an MMA fighter since 2013, according to the Ultimate Fighting Championship website.
The victim who testified that she was awake when she was sexually assaulted said she waited to tell her story because she had been traumatized and didn’t want to relive the events of March 24, 2018.
The Star-Telegram does not usually identify sexual assault victims.
“I was trying to process what had happened,” the woman testified. “But I was kind of in denial also.”
Six days later during a telephone interview, the woman told Kerry Adcock, a Fort Worth Police Department detective, that she and her friend were raped by the same man, on the same day, in the same room.
“She was upset, distraught. She really didn’t want to talk about this,” Adcock said. “I just kept asking and asking.”
During her second day of testimony on Wednesday, the now 22-year-old woman spoke in a quiet, halting voice, and explained that she dreaded retelling the experience.
Defense attorney Terri Moore, who is defending Alhassan, said woman’s story is a lie which has evolved over time.
Memory gaps
The woman’s older friend — now 24 — was asleep, intoxicated and unresponsive when she was allegedly sexually assaulted, and has offered little information to substantiate the allegations.
But the younger woman testified on Tuesday and Wednesday that she watched the sexual assault of her friend occur moments after the accused pulled down her clothing and raped her while using his free hand to pin her down on her bed.
Each of the women who testified to being raped said there are periods of time missing from their memories of the evening and the next morning. The older woman testified that she remembers kissing Alhassan earlier on the evening of March 23, but nothing after that.
The older woman couldn’t remember where a used condom found on her purse came from, and she testified that it was the appearance of the condom that prompted her friend and her friend’s mother to take her to the hospital for a sexual assault examination.
The younger woman testified it was dark in her bedroom when she and her friend were assaulted, so she couldn’t make out Alhassan’s features.
Moore questioned how the younger woman was able to relate details or even tell that a sexual assault was taking place if the room was so dark that she could barely see.
The younger woman also testified she was frozen in fear while her friend was being raped. During cross-examination by the defense attorney, she told Moore that she wasn’t frozen during her friend’s sexual assault examination at John Peter Smith Hospital, while talking to her mother or while being interviewed by responding officers, but that she didn’t report the assault immediately.
“I didn’t want to tell him (the detective),” the younger woman testified. “I was not prepared to say anything. I was afraid. Yes, I lied to the detective.”
Moore told the younger woman that she lied more than once and was lying to the jury.
‘Fight, flight or freeze’
The older woman was given a sexual assault exam at JPS Hospital hours after the alleged incident, according to testimony from the nurse who performed the examination. She told the nurse she didn’t remember anything that might substantiate a sexual assault allegation.
Both of the women alleging sexual assault said that by the time they left the bar they were intoxicated. Witnesses testified that the older woman displayed difficulty standing and walking.
Adcock testified that it isn’t uncommon to run into memory gaps with people who have been sexually assaulted. It is difficult for victims to retell a story when they don’t remember the whole story, according to Adcock’s testimony.
“It’s the way the brain works,” Adcock testified. “Fight, flight or freeze. The trauma of what’s going on causes the body not to work.”
Adcock said it was later in the investigation when it was determined that the sexual assault, if it happened, happened in Saginaw and not Fort Worth. Adcock testified that he gathered all the evidence he had collected and delivered it to Saginaw officers.
At the point it was determined it was Saginaw’s case, Adcock stopped investigating, he said.
Testimony in the case will continue Thursday.
This story includes information from Star-Telegram archives.
