Dancer wanted sex, defendant says in rape trial

The defendant testified he pulled a knife to defend
himself.

By TIM YOVICH

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

WARREN — A Newton Falls man accused of raping an exotic dancer maintains their encounter was consensual and she wanted kinky sex.

Jeffrey Town, 48, testified Thursday in his own defense of charges of kidnapping, gross sexual imposition and rape.

Today, the jury in the courtroom of Judge Peter J. Kontos of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court is expected to hear closing arguments and begin deliberations.

Town, a bachelor and a machinist at the time, is accused of raping the dancer Dec. 11, 2006, at his Newton Falls apartment.

During questioning by his attorney, John B. Juhasz, Town testified that his accuser arrived at his apartment to make a payment on a car she purchased from him and help clean his apartment.

He said she should clean his place after all he had done for her.

Once inside his apartment, he told the jury, he confronted her about not telling him about another man he had seen outside her Newton Falls apartment. He said he told her he couldn’t afford to help support her, her daughter and any man.

He said he was helping her pay her rent, taking her out to dinner, bought dances from her at the Club 76 in Austintown, where she worked, paid for her not to dance and bought her daughter toys and clothes.

In apartment

In the apartment, Town testified, the woman became very angry because she believed he was going to repossess the car because she had not been paying on it.

“She was quite irate,” he testified, adding that she began yelling at him, pulling on his clothing and hair and kicking and hitting him.

He grabbed a folding knife and opened it to keep her away, but cut her hand.

“I told her to chill out,” he told Juhasz.

When the dancer calmed down, he said she could pay off the car in exchange for sex.

She wanted to be tied up, he testified, so he bound her wrists in front of her with duct tape he retrieved from his car. Because her bound hands interfered with their having sex, he used the knife to cut the tape from her. They then continued to have sex.

The dancer testified that Town had threatened to kill her, offered her $10,000 to have sex with him, told her he had cancer and was thinking of suicide. He denied all of it.

Town said that after she ran from the apartment, saying she was going to claim he raped her, he drove to Kent.

“I was confused. I didn’t understand what was going on,” he told the jury.” He returned to his apartment, took $10,000 cash with him, and went to the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park.

He was taken into custody there five days after the encounter.

During cross-examination by David Toepfer, an assistant county prosecutor, Town testified he became interested in the dancer in July 2006 because of her looks and her legs. “I’m a leg man,” he testified.

He told the prosecutor that he did not know whether the man he saw at her apartment was her boyfriend or a relative.

Town told Toepfer he needed the knife to fend her off during the initial struggle, although he outweighed the dancer by 50 pounds, and he never called police about his experience. “I panicked,” he told the jury.

yovich@vindy.com