WOODLAND — Accused of felony sexual assault, a former UC Davis graduate student took the witness stand in Yolo Superior Court this week, saying he believed his actions that night to be part of a consensual encounter.
When Ephrem Rukundo later found himself under police investigation, “I was very shocked and confused, because I didn’t assault anybody,” he testified Tuesday during the second week of his trial.
Rukundo, 36, is charged with oral copulation of an unconscious person, sexual penetration of an unconscious person and sexual battery in connection with the April 26, 2015, incident, in which the alleged victim says Rukundo had sexual contact with her as she slept on a friend’s living room couch.
“I never consented to any sexual activity with him, and I know that,” the 22-year-old woman testified last week, saying she awoke to discover someone orally copulating her, followed by penetration.
But Rukundo, who had been dating a resident of the Davis home where the alleged crime occurred, offered a different version of events.
Though accompanied at trial by an interpreter in his native Kinyarwanda language, Rukundo spoke in English as he described encountering the alleged victim at a birthday party his date’s housemate had hosted the night before. At one point he noticed she was crying on the couch, and he briefly consoled her before he and his date retired to the bedroom.
Rukundo said he left for home at about 3:30 a.m., getting a drink of water from the kitchen along the way. As he passed through the living room, he noticed a blanket on the floor and, concerned it would get dirty, picked it up to drape over a person he saw sleeping on the couch.
“When I was putting the blanket on her she grabbed my hand,” Rukundo recalled under questioning by his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Dean Johansson. “She started passing it around her body — her chest area and everywhere.”
He said the woman then kissed his neck and began unbuttoning his shirt and — despite being confused, nervous and unaware of the woman’s name — “I thought I’d just go with it. … So then we had sex.”
Afterward, the woman cursed and demanded his identity, finally telling him to “get out of here,” he said, adding that at no time did she accuse him of rape or threaten to call the police.
Although he knew the woman had planned to stay the night on the couch, “I never got the impression she was sleeping,” Rukundo said under cross-examination by prosecutor Deanna Hays. “I don’t know what she was thinking. All I know is we had sex, and then I got a text accusing me of assaulting somebody.”
Rukundo’s testimony followed that of several character witnesses who spoke in his defense, including Yolo County’s elected public guardian, Cass Sylvia, whose family has hosted Rukundo in their home since he arrived here in 2010 to pursue a Ph.D.
“Very ethical, moral, a good person all the way through,” Sylvia said of Rukundo. “Children love him, grannies love him, I love him.”
Rukundo’s cross-examination continued this morning in Judge David Rosenberg’s courtroom, with closing arguments and jury deliberations slated for later in the week.
The case appeared to be at risk of a possible mistrial late Tuesday when it was discovered that Rukundo’s interpreter — one of only two in the United States to specialize in that dialect — would have to depart for Tanzania due to a death in the family. The second Kinyarwanda interpreter also is out of the country.
It required Rukundo to waive his right to an interpreter for the remainder of the trial, a scenario that defense lawyer Johansson seemed disinclined to advise. But Rosenberg said delaying the proceedings for weeks would mean losing the jury, declaring a mistrial and starting the trial anew.
“Since there is no option I will waive,” Rukundo said. “I don’t want to do it again.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene