Manhattan woman told me she was raped by NYPD cop, her boss testifies

 


An East Village woman told her boss she was raped "and it was a cop," jurors were told Thursday.

"She was extremely broken down and emotional and crying," Joanna Kreling, the woman's boss at Gap Inc., said of the accuser.

Kreling, 39, said she sat with her friend at Beth Israel Hospital hours after Officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata repeatedly visited her home in Dec. 2008.

"She said she had been raped and it was a cop," Kreling said. "She was still very much in a state of shock."

The defense seized on another comment the accuser made, claiming it showed the drunken woman struck up a friendly rapport with the cop.

"I can't believe he left me like that," Moreno's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina quoted the woman as saying, reading from hospital reports.

"She said that multiple times," Kreling confirmed. "She was in a very vulnerable state and [was] left as somebody who was hurt."

Tacopina's use of the hospital statement brought an angry rebuke from the prosecutors - who struck a note of incredulity while asking Kreling if she thought the comment meant the accuser was upset "because this was a break up?"

The defense objected to that question, and the judge did not allow Kreling to respond.

Prosecutors charge that after the two cops helped the accuser into her E. 13th St. home, Moreno raped her as she lay face-down and passed out on her bed. Mata allegedly stood guard and helped his partner cover up the crime.

They say the cops returned three times to the apartment that night without telling their superiors where they were.

Defense lawyers say the officers came back only to check up on the woman - at her request - using the keys she gave Moreno.

Prosecutors called a second witness, Andom Mangum, 35, who was leaving the E. 13th St. building after visiting a friend - as the cops escorted the woman inside.

Mangum said he came down the stairway as the woman was "staggering" and "sliding" on her high heels and the cops walked silently up the stairs single file.

He said the woman slammed into him as she passed him but agreed under cross-examination that the woman was able to walk by herself.

Prosecutors played a surveillance tape showing the woman being escorted into her building, one of the officers holding her elbow as she walked quickly without stumbling.

Prosecutors contend the woman was too drunk to consent to sex. The defense says she was inebriated but not incapacitated - and there was no sex.