MORGANTOWN — The trial for a former WVU professor accused of waking a woman up by sexually assaulting her began in Monongalia County Circuit Court on Tuesday.
Joseph Baltimore was indicted for second-degree sexual assault by the January 2018 term of the Monongalia County grand jury. Judge Susan Tucker is presiding over the case.
“I was awakened by the defendant kneeling beside my bed just like, it’s disgusting to even say it’s so gross,” the alleged victim said.
The Dominion Post does not typically name the victims or alleged victims of sexual crimes.
She said couldn’t remember all of the details of her night on Aug. 2, 2017, leading into the morning of Aug. 3, but she testified she woke up to Baltimore’s arm under her covers and his fingers inside her.
Baltimore’s attorney, Joseph Spano, pointed out multiple instances of what he said were inconsistencies between the victim’s multiple statements to police and a WVU Title IX investigator. Including Tuesday’s testimony, the victim has given five statements about that night.
In one statement, the victim said she did not remember stopping at Big Times, a bar on High Street where her roommate worked. However, the roommate, Jordan Goss, testified the victim was there and had a conversation with Baltimore for about 10 or 15 minutes. Goss said she wasn’t positive what the two talked about as she was working.
The victim said she was surrounded by people and doesn’t dispute her former roommate’s account that she spoke with Baltimore, but that if it happened, it was an insignificant moment in an insignificant night.
“The night itself has nothing to do with what I woke up to,” she said.
After waking up, the victim said she screamed at Baltimore to leave her room and apartment, she said. Baltimore didn’t and instead paced back in front of her door, she said. The victim said she didn’t want to leave her room since Baltimore was outside and acting weird, so she texted and called a friend who lives just around the corner and then ran out of her apartment without shoes to wait for her outside.
The friend then came into the apartment and made Baltimore leave, the victim said.
Spano asked why the alleged victim didn’t wake up Goss if she had to leave her room anyways or why she didn’t call 911. The victim replied that there is no right way to handle these things and that she was hysterical at the time.
Both the prosecution, led by Monongalia County Prosecuting Attorney Perri DeChristopher, and the defense, agree on some things.
Goss offered her couch to Baltimore because he lost his phone and wallet and was unable to get home, for one. Goss testified she met Baltimore about five years before the incident and had interacted with him countless times since then and that she considered him a friend.
Both sides agree that the three of them sat on that couch and talked until the sun came up.
DeChristopher, however, took a starkly different view of Baltimore’s actions. In her opening statement, she said he violated not just the law, but a young woman.
Spano said his client and the alleged victim started snuggling on the couch after Goss went to bed. He said the victim then led him into her room where they started messing around. He said that his client and the victim touched each other’s private parts, but that Baltimore had been drinking and was unable to perform so nothing else happened.
He said his client was wandering around the apartment in the morning searching for his phone in the morning. The victim testified that Baltimore asked repeatedly to use her phone after she kicked him out of her room, but that she didn’t know or care why he wanted it and that she did not let him use it.
