NORTHAMPTON — The woman who said she was raped as a 15-year-old resident at a local program for troubled youths in 2009 testified Friday that even when she first met Alphonso S. Cintron, her interactions with him made her uncomfortable.
Cintron, 34, a former night supervisor at the Grove — a Northeast Center for Youth and Families residential treatment program that closed in 2012 — has pleaded not guilty in Hampshire Superior Court to charges of rape and abuse of a child as well as child abuse.
Cintron also allegedly failed to report to authorities that the same girl had been raped by another staff member, Fabian Williams, who is being tried separately, said Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Caleb Weiner, who is prosecuting the case.
Williams has pleaded not guilty to rape and two counts of aggravated rape of a child. The charges against him involve at least two different victims.
Cintron was terminated from his work at the center for reasons unrelated to the alleged assault, Rashida Rosario-Daniels, director of residential services for Northeast Center, testified Thursday.
Cintron’s accuser, now 22, testified Friday that when she arrived at the Grove in Northampton, the turbulent events in her life had come to a head. Her parents brought her to the center just weeks after confronting her about using alcohol and drugs.
When she arrived, the woman testified that she was encouraged to talk to staff members at the center about her problems.
“I was just fed up with a lot of things at that point,” she said. “I was told to utilize staff, so that’s what I was doing.”
That’s when the then-15-year-old girl approached Williams one day in the summer of 2009.
“He seemed a little more laid back and casual than the other staff members,” the woman testified. “It felt more comfortable talking to him about the things that I had done wrong. He didn’t seem to be judging me for the parties I had been attending or the people I had been spending time with.”
But the conversation took an unsettling turn, the woman said in court, when Williams referred to her record that was kept on site.
“I read your file,” she recalled Williams saying to her. “You really know how to have a good time. You know how to party.”
Soon after that, when she and Williams were alone at the center one day, the two watched TV together, she testified, and then he pulled her on top of him and raped her.
The woman testified that two weeks after the first assault, he came into her room one night and led her downstairs to the laundry room where he raped her again.
Sometime in the weeks that followed, Cintron also approached her,she testified.
“Oh what, so Fabian’s the only one that gets to have fun?” he said to her, the woman testified. He then allegedly lifted her shirt as he fondled and kissed her breasts, she said.
One night, Cintron came to her room and asked if she wanted to smoke a cigarette outside, according to her testimony.
Once outside in the back and out of sight, the woman testified, Cintron told her that she would have to earn the cigarette. He then forced her to the ground, pushed on her shoulder and compelled her to perform oral sex, she testified.
Before that, she had told him multiple times that she did not consent to the sex, she testified.
Even before Cintron forced the woman to perform oral sex, she testified, he had tried once before to do the same thing — again, in exchange for cigarettes.
Attorney Tracy E. Duncan, of Springfield, who is representing Cintron, told the jury during her opening statements Thursday that the then 15-year-old girl, who had a history of alcohol abuse and boundary issues with older men, was a troubled teenager who manipulated the adults around her.
The woman became visibly upset when during cross-examination Friday Duncan asked her if she remembered the date of the assault. She responded by saying it was in July or August of 2009, but she was not entirely sure of the exact date.
“I’m just asking a question,” Duncan told the woman.
“You’re also smiling and asking the same question over and over,” the woman responded, her voice shaking.
The trial is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. Monday.
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com.