It doesn’t matter if the disabled woman at the center of a sexual assault trial was unable to clearly define the amount of time between each of the three incidents when a janitor at the Pines Community Center touched her, Prosecutor Wayne Coull told jurors Thursday.
It doesn’t matter if she can definitively say what occurred during each instance or if her testimony was sometimes difficult to understand, he said – a lack of connective tissue in her brain that has given her speech difficulties, along with a “childlike” mind and the inability to consent to sexual activity.
All that matters, Coull said, was whether the jury was willing to believe the woman had done her best to explain what Robert Magoon did to her.
Defense attorney Catherine Flinchbaugh told jurors the woman was “prone to spurts of lying,” echoing language the woman’s one-on-one aide used in an interview with a state investigator in 2016. Flinchbaugh said the lying occurs as part of the woman’s cognitive impairments and inability to grasp the significance of lying. As a result, she said, the jurors must reject the sexual assault charges against Magoon, a former police officer in Franklin and Concord.
After Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Diane Nicolosi ruled that two of the seven charges Magoon, 74, of Tilton was facing could not be supported by the victim’s testimony, the jury began deliberations Thursday afternoon.
Magoon is accused of assaulting a now-29-year-old woman three times between January 2013 and April 2014 while working as a maintenance supervisor at the Northfield community center. This is the first of three trials in which he is accused of assaulting victims at the center between August 2012 and May 2016; the other cases, which allegedly involve seven children, are scheduled to begin later this spring.
Nicolosi denied a motion made by the defense yesterday to drop the case altogether on the basis that the woman was unable to consistently describe when and how the acts occurred, as well as the argument that the woman is capable of consenting to sexual acts, but she did throw out two charges because the woman’s testimony was unclear.
Attorneys for both sides focused on the woman’s credibility. Defense attorney Flinchbaugh said there was no way Magoon could have assaulted the woman three times in hourlong increments in a conference room at the end of a hallway without someone noticing. The room where the assaults allegedly occurred is usually left open and has windows facing outside and on the door, she said.
She noted that the woman was well-known and liked to be around others, citing testimony Wednesday from Pines staff members, and that the woman spent at least two hours of her day at the center waiting for her mother to pick her up.
“If she was missing for 50 percent of her visit, how is it that no one could notice?” Flinchbaugh asked.
But Coull argued that jurors would have to believe the woman was capable of fabricating situations she has no context for, such as sexual encounters. He said there was no way the woman would be able to come up with the details she described in court when she was unable to name the body parts where Magoon touched her and had her touch by guiding her hand. Coull had her identify the body parts during testimony by having her color in the areas on drawings of naked men and women.
“That’s a pretty complex, complicated, manipulative thing for someone to do,” he said. “Did you think any of those things when you met her?”
Coull disagreed that it would be implausible that no one could have seen Magoon lure the woman into the room with promises of a doughnut, noting Magoon was known to visit the Pines during the afternoon, hours after the time he would have finished his shifts and during quiet periods before children in the center’s after-school programs arrived. He also noted that of the seven cameras located in the building, none are located in the room or pointing toward the hallway where the room is located.
“When talking about sexual offenses, who picks the time and place? The offender,” he said. “Are they going to pick a time when it’s likely someone is going to walk by? A place where other people are around? No.”
The jury is scheduled to reconvene at 10 a.m. Friday morning.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)