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This article is reproduced without permission under the fair use doctrine. Originally published online at http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050423/REPOSITORY/504230316/1031
All materials prepared especially for Concord Monitor Online, including photographs and illustrations, are copyrighted by the Concord Monitor and New Hampshire Patriot.

Lawyers for three magazine salesmen charged with raping a Concord woman told a judge yesterday the sex was consensual and accused the woman of concocting the rape story out of regret.

"I certainly believe she does regret it," said Donna Brown, a public defender representing Joseph Haniffy, 24, of Massachusetts, one of the suspects. "And I think she has convinced herself that it was rape."

Brown and the other lawyers argued that the woman, 19, was not held against her will or threatened. They also said she made at least one phone call to a friend, telling her to come over and meet the "cute guys" she had in her apartment.

The victim attended the hearing but did not speak.

The three suspects, who also include Cassidy Coburn, 19, of Utah and Christopher Armstrong, 23, of Arkansas, were in Concord District Court for a preliminary assessment of the charges. After nearly three hours of testimony, Judge Gerard Boyle determined there was enough evidence to transfer the charges to superior court for trial. Once the case is moved, the three men will be allowed to enter formal pleas.

According to the police, each of the men has acknowledged having sex with the woman, and each said things went too far. But their lawyers made it clear yesterday that they will fight the rape charges and mount a defense based on consent. "They were invited in, they socialized for two hours, they drank together and there was some flirting going on,"attorney James Laura, who is defending Armstrong, told the judge. "It appears things were consensual."

After the hearing, Laura and Coburn's attorney, Ted Barnes, questioned the validity of the men's statements as quoted by the police. Brown could not be reached for further comment.

The woman reported the alleged assault to the police late on March 28, about two hours after the salesmen had left her house. In interviews that night and the next day, the woman said she had met the men when two of them, Coburn and Armstrong, knocked on her door selling magazines.

They showed her paperwork that convinced her the sales were legitimate and came into her apartment, she told the police.

The Concord police investigators who testified yesterday said Coburn and Armstrong helped themselves to the beer in the woman's refrigerator and offered her one with the cap off. About 10 minutes after she drank it, the woman began feeling woozy, as though she had been drugged, according to the police detectives'testimony.

The woman spent two hours talking with Coburn and Armstrong, according to the police. Eventually, Haniffy, who had been outside driving the sales van, entered the apartment, although the woman said she did not remember how. (Under questioning from one of the defense lawyers, a police detective said yesterday that Coburn had come outside to meet him at a prearranged time and told him to come up because there was a woman willing to have sex with them.) She told the police that Haniffy forced her to perform oral sex on him. She protested, and then the three men raped her together, according to her statement to the police.

The men were arrested a few days later in Maryland. Their boss, Aaron Harvey, had told the police where and when to look for them.

The three suspects have not responded to requests for interviews. Yesterday's hearing provided the first indication of how their lawyers, all court-appointed, will defend them: They will question the credibility of the 19-year-old victim. The lawyers made several key assertions they believe will help their case:

• Preliminary test results, which police detectives warned are unreliable, do not corroborate the woman's theory that she was slipped a drug in her beer. Her urine contained signs of alcohol and the drugs found in the cold medicine she had taken that morning. The final results are not in yet.
• The woman made several phone calls and sent at least one text message to friends during the time the men were in her apartment. In the text message, she asked a friend to come over because she was concerned. In one of the phone calls, however, she invited a girlfriend over to meet the magazine salesmen. She also put Armstrong on the phone to talk directly with her friend. The lawyers asked detectives why the woman hadn't called 911 if she was scared. The detectives said they hadn't asked the woman that question.
• Haniffy's cell phone has the alleged victim's phone number plugged into its phone book. City Prosecutor Tracy Connolly said the number could have come from the magazine order form the woman filled out. Brown suggested the woman had given it to Haniffy after the alleged assault.
• Neither the woman nor the suspects had any injuries that suggested they had struggled. Brown, Laura and Barnes said that suggests the woman had not fought the men. Similarly, the men did not have weapons or make threats to the woman. The attorneys said that left her free to leave the apartment if she was frightened.
• The woman did not go straight to the police or the hospital after the alleged assault. When the friend she had text messaged arrived at her apartment, they went to the mall on Loudon Road. Her friends persuaded her to go to the hospital.

Connolly, the prosecutor, repeatedly protested the defense lawyers'questions about the alleged victim's behavior. She reiterated those complaints in her closing remarks.

"Opening the door to a knock is not consent," Connolly said. "Socializing is not consent. Not screaming is not consent. Allowing someone to have a few or a lot of drinks is not consent."

Connolly also sought to refute the defense lawyers' claims that the suspects had not used force to intimidate or frighten the woman.

"Three men (in her apartment). That's force right there," Connolly said.

The men are being held at the Merrimack County jail in Boscawen. Bail is $3 million for Haniffy, $1.5 million for Armstrong and $1 million for Coburn.

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