The inmate who former Belknap County sheriff’s deputy Ernest Justin Blanchette is accused of raping en route to prison last summer was a willing participant who not only hinted she wanted to have sex but also directed Blanchette to the abandoned home where they eventually did, his defense attorney said Wednesday as a criminal trial against the ex-officer began.
“This is her idea,” said Brad Davis, adding that the inmate later bragged about the encounter and told friends she could sue Blanchette for up to $1 million.
Neither side contests that the two willingly had sex during the transport on July 2 of last year, but prosecutors say the woman was bribed with cigarettes and the use of Blanchette’s cell phone. He had groomed her with the same privileges during earlier encounters in 2014, including one in which they had sex for the first time, they said.
“She knew this treatment was special,” Nicole Schultz-Price told jurors. “She didn’t want it to stop.”
Blanchette, 36, has been accused of sexually victimizing multiple inmates between 2013 and last summer, when an investigation was launched into the July 2 encounter. That encounter is the focus of the trial in Manchester. Several other charges are still pending in Belknap County.
Attorneys said Wednesday that the encounter was first reported to prison officials by an inmate who learned about it from the victim. When initially questioned, the victim denied it happened and refused to even identify Blanchette as her transporting officer, but investigators recovered surveillance footage from nearby the home that placed them there, and she eventually agreed to talk.
The woman testified Wednesday that she had just been sentenced that morning to two years in prison, and was crying on the way back. She said she asked to use Blanchette’s phone, knowing he had offered it to her before, and began complaining about the prospect of not having sex for two years.
“I think I was hinting to him,” she said.
She said Blanchette pulled off to a secluded area but spotted two bystanders and got spooked. She told him she knew of an abandoned home in Bedford, not far from the women’s prison. He drove them there, and they stayed for about eight minutes, according to prosecutors.
The inmate was more comfortable with Blanchette by then. Their first encounter, on Sept. 18, 2014, had come as a shock, she said.
“I didn’t know what to say or do,” she said, recalling that Blanchette had pulled off unexpectedly onto a dirt road and unbuckled his pants without prompt. “I didn’t know what he expected me to do, because I’d never been put in that kind of situation,” she said.
But she stopped short of saying he had acted threatening in any way, that time or in the encounter last summer. In fact, she insisted that at no time did Blanchette force himself onto her. He didn’t even tell her to keep quiet about the encounters.
“Why did you do it?” prosecutor Michael Zaino asked, referring to the first sexual encounter.
“Because I could,” she replied.
Davis told jurors there is no evidence that Blanchette used his professional authority during the transport last summer to force the woman into sex.
“It’s not a crime that, because he’s a sheriff and that she’s an inmate, that this is aggravated felonious sexual assault,” he said. “It’s a crime if he used his position of authority to coerce her to do that.”
He added: “This is a very street-smart individual who knew what she was doing.”
But Schultz-Price countered that “the law is clear: there can be no consent from a victim in the custody of someone else.”
The inmate acknowledged that she has considered suing Blanchette, but hasn’t taken serious action other than talking to a few attorneys, all but one of whom contacted her on their own. Davis played a recording of a phone conversation she had from prison with a friend last year.
“Why are you suing?” the friend asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” the woman replied.
“You’re destroying him.” the friend said.
“He destroyed himself, man,” she said, adding, “He knew what he was doing.”
(Jeremy Blackman can be reached at 369-3319, jblackman@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JBlackmanCM.)