Girl testifies grandfather raped her

By Ed Runyan

The girl ran from the home and hid from her grandfather, she testified.

WARREN — A 60-year-old Champion man went on trial Friday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, charged with raping his 13-year-old granddaughter Jan. 28, 2006.

In opening statements to the jury, Diane Barber, an assistant county prosecutor, said DNA evidence taken from the girl’s body at an area hospital will be offered to show that Martin E. Warren, of Cleveland Avenue, committed the crimes.

Jeff Goodman, one of Warren’s defense attorneys, said in his opening statement the “unreliable and inconsistent” statements from the girl and “very inconsistent and very unreliable” DNA evidence to be presented will not convince the jury of any type of crime.

“His denial is absolute, and it is consistent,” Goodman said.

The girl, who no longer lives with her grandparents, was the first witness. She described the Saturday nearly three years ago when she was home alone with her grandfather and went downstairs to help him switch to a different Internet game on his computer.

She sat on his lap and tickled him on the stomach, as she sometimes did, and he teasingly threatened to “blow bubbles” on her stomach, as he had done for years, she testified.

But Warren started kissing her on the neck, which he had never done before, and eventually partially removed her clothing and partially removed his, she said. He then kissed her in her private area and committed one other sexual offense against her, she said.

Warren is accused of two counts of rape, each of which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The trial resumes Monday in the courtroom of Judge Peter Kontos.

The girl said she didn’t know if one of the offenses in Warren’s indictment occurred but was “pretty sure” the other one did. She said she may have blocked out some of the details of that day.

The girl, now 16, said she asked Warren to stop and tried to get away.

After the assault went on for a couple of minutes, Warren asked the girl if she wanted him to stop, she said yes and ran up the stairs, she said.

Warren came up the stairs and asked if she as OK, then went back downstairs, she testified.

The girl then fled the house, went to a gas station along Mahoning Avenue to call her grandmother on a pay phone and eventually reached her aunt on her aunt’s cell phone, she said.

But while she was making the calls, Warren drove down Mahoning Avenue, so she hid under a trailer parked nearby, she said.

She was crying, which caused people to ask her what was wrong and then call police for her. Police took her to the Champion police station, she said.

Earlier, Judge Kontos ruled the statements Warren gave to police Jan. 28 and the statements he gave to a Champion police officer and an investigator from the Trumbull County Children Services Board on Feb. 8, 2006, were admissible as evidence.

An audiotape of the Feb. 8 interview included statements Warren made about his mental health problems and the possibility he might have committed offenses against his granddaughter that he could no longer remember.

runyan@vindy.com