Smith’s Accuser Testifies to Rape at Kennedy Home : Trial: Sometimes tearful, she tells her assertion of a ‘disgusting’ crime but says she cannot recall some events.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Eight months after her charges seized the world’s attention, the woman who accuses William Kennedy Smith of rape described to a jury Wednesday in a sometimes confident, sometimes tearful manner her account of a charmed evening that ended in tragedy.

The 30-year-old Jupiter, Fla., woman seemed unafraid of defense lawyers inside the courtroom or the eyes of the world watching the televised proceedings as she testified that a young man she said she trusted--the nephew of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)--had turned on her to commit a “disgusting . . . dirty” crime.

“I couldn’t understand how this nice guy had turned into that one, the one who had raped me,” said the woman, as she detailed how Smith allegedly assaulted her at the Kennedys’ oceanfront mansion in the early morning hours on March 30. Dressed in a charcoal-gray suit adorned with a single strand of pearls and a jewelry pin, the woman choked back sobs and brushed away tears as she related details of the alleged crime.

But under cross-examination, the woman repeatedly said that she could not recall many of the events of that night, including at least one fact that she had detailed in a deposition less than two months ago.

“I’ve tried to remember details of that evening, but it’s very difficult--one, because of the time frame and, two, because of what I’ve been through,” she told lead defense attorney Roy E. Black.

“All I remember is Mr. Smith raping me,” she said, as Smith sat motionless at the opposite side of a wood-paneled courtroom that seats fewer than 50 spectators.

“I know you’ve been prepared to say that,” said Black, who accused her several times of ducking questions.

“Sir, I have not been prepared by anyone,” she countered. She said later that she also had read no statements of other witnesses, though her lawyers had provided her with a library of “thousands of pages” of such statements.

Although she intermittently became upset, the woman quickly collected herself. Her poise was in sharp contrast to the testimony earlier Wednesday and Tuesday of her friend, Anne W. Mercer, who appeared too upset to answer coherently at times during her questioning Tuesday.

Black, who had angrily interrogated Mercer, was more restrained in his examination of the alleged victim.

The appearance of the accuser, who had not been expected to take the stand for several days, seemed to instantly expand the crowd of retirees and others who have encircled the Palm Beach County Courthouse.

“Obviously, we saw some very sad and dramatic testimony today,” Smith told a group of several hundred reporters, photographers and onlookers as he left the courthouse for the evening.

“But I have been living with these allegations, with this damnable lie, for the last eight months and I hope everyone will be patient, as I have been, and allow me the opportunity to defend myself in the coming days,” he said.

In two hours of direct examination by prosecutor Moira K. Lasch, the accuser explained that she had felt safe giving Smith a lift to the Kennedy home at 1095 N. Ocean Blvd. after 3 a.m. that morning because of the reputation of the Kennedys and the seeming courtliness of Smith. “We were on a friendly basis,” she said. “The senator was there. I didn’t feel there was any danger.”

Smith gave her “a quick good-night peck in the car,” she said. A few minutes later, after they had strolled onto the beach, he gave her two more kisses. “They were not the friendly kisses in the car; they were a little more romantic,” she said. “But I still did not feel they were sexual.”

The woman said that, after Smith tackled and raped her on the east lawn of the estate, she did not rush to call the police because she feared that they might offer no safety against the influential Kennedys. She instead called her friend, Mercer, to come pick her up because “I wanted to feel safe . . . . I didn’t know that the police would care, or come. But I knew that Anne would.”

In answer to Black’s questions, she said she could not remember what day earlier that week she had made plans to go out with her friends on that Friday (March 29); whether she had arranged to meet a friend, Tony Liott, at a bar that evening; whether Mercer had told her at one point that she was tired, or how long after she and her friends had arrived at a nightclub that she had met Smith.

Black asked repeatedly about a drink that other witnesses have said she had with Liott at a bar called Taboo. The woman has never spoken of the meeting through five earlier sworn statements, an omission that the defense maintains shows the weakness of her story.

“I remember seeing Tony; I don’t remember if it was that evening,” the woman told Black.

Earlier Wednesday, an emergency room physician who had seen the woman after the alleged crime said she had diagnosed a rib contusion, or deep bruise, and had observed “regressive behavior” that was consistent with her charge that a crime had occurred.

Dr. Rebecca Prostko said she was convinced, after she saw the woman curl up on a hospital stretcher in withdrawal, that “there was a traumatic event of some sort.” Such “regressive behavior is a little hard to fake. She would have to be pretty sophisticated . . . . I didn’t get that impression at all,” Prostko said.

Black pointed out that Prostko’s written report of the woman’s condition did not use the phrase “rib contusion” but only described a set of symptoms.