Suspect forced sex, disabled St. Paul teen says

The teenager who prosecutors say was raped by Joshua L. Smith on Sept. 6, 2006, has a congenital syndrome that causes deformities in her bones, skin and hair, and mental and developmental disabilities.

She was 17 at the time of the attack but had the cognitive abilities of a 12-year-old.

She is 19 now and, although she mixed up the names of some body parts during her testimony Thursday, she clearly told the jury in Smith's rape trial that he forced her to have sex in the basement of his St. Paul home.

Smith, 18, is on trial in Ramsey County District Court on two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He is accused of the September 2006 rape and the rape of another woman shortly after midnight New Year's Day 2007.

That 57-year-old victim testified Tuesday that she was brutally and repeatedly raped, kicked and beaten in the parking lot of the Salvation Army on Payne Avenue. Smith was 16 at the time of the attacks and was certified to stand trial as an adult.

The teenage victim said Thursday that she had known Smith since she was in seventh grade.

"Were you friends?" prosecutor Jill Fedje asked.

Still, the two exchanged cell phone numbers after meeting up at a park. Smith called on Sept. 8 and invited her over.

Smith met her at the bus stop, the teenager said. He took her into the basement through a outside entrance and into a small room where he raped her twice and kicked her in the head in between.

The teenager said she felt scared and threatened. Smith took her cell phone -- her mother had told her that if she lost it she wouldn't get another one.

Sara Wirkkala, a registered nurse at the Midwest Children's Resource Center, interviewed the victim Sept. 25, 2006. That interview was videotaped and shown to jurors Thursday morning.

"Someone forced me to do something that wasn't too fun," the girl told Wirkkala.

"Josh," the girl said.

"He forced me to have sex with him and I really didn't want to."

Jurors also heard from the teenager's mother. The Star Tribune is not naming the girl's mother to protect the identity of the victim.

The girl had just learned to take the bus by herself that fall, her mother said. She was supposed to be home by dark, but when the mother came home from work early about 8:30 or 9 p.m. that Friday night, her daughter wasn't there.

When the teen did arrive, she was unusually quiet, her hair was messy and her face blotchy. Her mother grounded her for being out late and "she just went upstairs," the mother said. "Typically she would have argued 'that's not fair' like a teenager would," the mother said.

"I am really scared becuse if I tell you this u must not tell any one else, okay. I was forced to have sex with someone but I don't know what to do about it. So if u are up to helping me plez do becuse I don't know what to do about it ... "

The teenager's mother asked her daughter what had happened and was told that she had been raped by "Joshua."

The mother found the underwear the girl had been wearing the day she was raped, bloody and crumpled in a ball, and took those and the note to the St. Paul police.

The trial is expected to resume at 10:30 a.m. today.