NORTHAMPTON — A jury saw dozens of often sexually suggestive text messages Thursday between a former Worthington woman and the Massachusetts State Police trooper she alleges sexually assaulted her in 2014 after the two met on a dating website.
State trooper Christopher Kennedy, 33, of West Springfield, has pleaded not guilty in Hampshire Superior Court to indecent exposure, assault and battery and indecent assault and battery. Kennedy formerly worked in the Northampton barracks until he was suspended without pay days after the alleged incident, according to the state police.
On Thursday, a jury heard opening arguments as well as testimony from the alleged victim.
Prosecutors say Kennedy exposed himself to the woman in her Worthington home on a June evening in 2014 and forced her to grope him.
During her opening arguments, Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Jennifer Suhl told jurors that Kennedy was on duty at the time of the assault and was fully uniformed.
Kennedy’s attorney, David Hoose, of Northampton, countered by reminding jurors that, although the trooper was on duty at the time, this is not a trial to determine whether he acted inappropriately on the job — because he had, Hoose said, but that is not a crime.
“It would not be fair for him to suffer criminal penalties as a result of this,” Hoose said in court.
The 39-year-old woman, who has since relocated, was the first witness to testify and said the two met on a dating website. After a chain of online and text messages several weeks before the alleged encounter, the two met for coffee at a nearby gas station and then returned to her home in Worthington, the woman testified.
The Daily Hampshire Gazette generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.
It was a quote on the woman’s profile that first caught Kennedy’s eye. “You can’t get off if you don’t get on,” the quote read, according to Hoose.
“Love the quote. Any interest in a man in uniform? Lol,” Kennedy wrote, according to messages shown in court.
The messages continued via text, as well as on the Plenty of Fish dating website, for about two weeks before the two met in person.
One exchange included Kennedy apparently offering for the two to rendezvous in his cruiser.
Eventually, on June 1, 2014, Kennedy and the woman agreed to meet in person at a gas station about 10 minutes from the woman’s home — which she testified is rather secluded.
The woman’s first impression of Kennedy? “Kind of dorky, I guess,” she testified. “Some cops are intimidating … and he wasn’t that.”
So they sipped coffee in the gas station parking lot for about 10 minutes, according to surveillance footage played in court, before heading back to the woman’s house.
She testified she felt comfortable enough that she felt OK with inviting him over to finish their coffees.
“Pretty much, when he walked in the door, he started unzipping his pants,” the woman said in court. “I was shocked. I was scared, and I even said ‘no means no.’ I just kept saying it. I didn’t know what to do.”
She said that Kennedy, while exposing himself, grabbed her wrist and forcefully guided her hand to his penis.
Kennedy said to her, “I want you to see what you’re doin’ to me,” the woman testified.
The woman testified that she yanked her hand away, and backed away from him into a counter, where he allegedly began to kiss her.
After the kiss, the woman testified, Kennedy zipped up his pants and started toward the door. Before leaving, he turned back around to face her.
“Are you going to report me?” she testified Kennedy asked her.
The woman said in court that she told Kennedy “no.” But this was only because she was petrified, she testified, and she feared what Kennedy might return to her home uninvited if she said otherwise.
“I felt like what happened was wrong,” the woman said in court. “I was scared. I just felt like he used his uniform to try and do something.”
Before calling two different local police departments — neither of which answered their main lines — the woman testified she began reaching out to her best friend Jenny Didas, 34.
The two texted back and forth, according to Didas’ testimony. Those messages, too, were seen in court. They also spoke on the phone.
Didas testified that the whole encounter had unnerved the woman.
“Her voice sounded different that I had ever heard before,” Didas testified. “She sounded a bit scared even of what just happened. She’s not very a flappable person. She’s generally very calm, and she did not sound calm.”
Robin Whitney, a former State Police detective lieutenant, testified that Kennedy deleted his Plenty of Fish account about a month after the alleged sexual assault.
Attorneys said in court Thursday that all of the evidence would likely be heard by Friday morning, after which the jurors will be instructed.
No defense witnesses are expected to testify, Hoose told Judge Daniel Ford. The trial is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. Friday.
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com.