She said it was a violent attack.
He said it was consensual.
A Howard jury must decide whether a Columbia teen is guilty of choking and raping a young woman near Wilde Lake High School in October 2007, or whether the victim told a lie that spun out of control.
Dedrick Wilkerson, 18, is charged with first- and second-degree rape, first-and second-degree sex offenses, assault and false imprisonment in connection with the attack.
During opening arguments Tuesday, prosecutor Mary Murphy recounted the incident beginning when Wilkerson approached the 23-year-old victim about 9 p.m. at a Columbia Bank ATM machine in the Wilde Lake Village Shopping Center.
The two had a casual conversation as they walked away from the bank, Murphy said, but Wilkerson then grabbed the victim by the throat, threw her to the ground behind the Columbia Association tennis courts and choked her until she lost consciousness.
The victim awoke to Wilkerson raping her, Murphy said.
“It’s a day she will remember, though she may try to forget,” Murphy told the jury.
Howard police linked Wilkerson to the case using the bank’s surveillance tape, and the victim later identified Wilkerson from a photo array, Murphy said.
Wilkerson told police he had never met the victim and denied having sex with her, yet his DNA was left at the scene, Murphy said.
Defense attorney Mary Pizzo gave a drastically different account of the incident in which the victim was planning to buy drugs but was unable to get cash from the ATM machine.
She then met Wilkerson and agreed to have sex with him in exchange for drugs, Pizzo said, adding that medical tests found cocaine in the victim’s system from earlier that day.
She may have lied about the rape because she was angry that she never received the drugs or because she didn’t want to tell her family the truth, Pizzo said.
Wilkerson lied to police about meeting the victim because he was scared of getting in trouble for drug involvement, Pizzo said.
“There’s no worse nightmare for a woman than being raped… but an equally bad nightmare is being accused of raping someone that you did not,” she said.
“It’s not rape when there’s consent.”
According to charging documents, the Department of Parole and Probation was monitoring Wilkerson with an electronic ankle bracelet at the time of the attack, but his juvenile record could not be obtained.
The trial before Howard Circuit Judge Diane Leasure is expected to conclude today.
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