A New York police officer charged with rape took the stand in his own defense on Friday and for the first time publicly offered his account of what happened the night he and his partner assisted a drunken woman into her East Village apartment.  The woman was drunk, maybe stumbling a bit, Officer Franklin Mata testified in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, but she could walk on her own. She engaged in conversation, built a rapport with his partner, Officer Kenneth Moreno, and even flirted. She asked them to come back and check on her throughout the night. His account of the events of that night in December 2008 is in stark contrast to the portrait the woman painted.  She testified in mid-April that she had been too drunk to remember much of the night, that she had passed out in her own vomit in the back of a taxi and had awakened to the sensations of one of the officers rolling down her tights and raping her while she lay facedown and dazed on her bed.  Both officers are on trial for rape, though prosecutors contend that it was only Officer Moreno who sexually assaulted the woman.  “We weren’t doing anything wrong,” said Officer Mata, 29, who was mostly still and soft-spoken, though he occasionally raised his eyebrows and his voice when trying to emphasize a point or expressing incredulity at questions that the prosecutor asked him.  The prosecutor, Coleen Balbert, was aggressive and sounded equally incredulous at some of his answers.  She shouted into the microphone that the officers’ actual motivation for returning repeatedly to the woman’s apartment was for Officer Moreno to “go back to have sex with her, isn’t that right?”  “Absolutely not,” said Officer Mata, curling his eyebrows.  “It was because he wanted to go back there and you were helping him do it,” she shot back.  Officer Mata testified that they received a call shortly after 1 a.m. on Dec. 7, 2008, to help a drunken woman in the back of a taxi. When they arrived, he said, the taxi driver told them that he wanted the woman out of his cab, not that she was unable to get out, as she testified. Ms. Balbert argued with Officer Mata over that point, a crucial issue because the prosecution is trying to prove that the woman was so drunk that she was unable to consent to sex.  Officer Mata said that he did not see or smell any vomit on the woman, and that before they escorted her into the apartment, she was actually standing behind the taxi for a few moments. She walked up five flights of stairs under her own power, he said.  After she entered the apartment, the door closed behind her with her keys still in the lock, he testified. The two officers went in to give her the keys, leading to the start of a dialogue between Officer Moreno and her, Officer Mata said.  “Ken was telling her about his past drinking problem and about how he had a drinking problem at one point and he was fighting for custody of his daughter and he had to make a decision to stop drinking,” Officer Mata said.  “Their conversation seemed very friendly, even a little flirty at times,” he added.  Officer Mata said the woman gave them her keys and asked them to return to check on her.  The officers returned three times. In one instance, they returned after responding to a 911 call for a homeless person at a neighboring address — a call that Officer Mata conceded had been made by Officer Moreno, though Officer Mata said he did not know that at the time. Ms. Balbert questioned why they made the return trips, asking, “Are you a part of the Department of Social Services that does checks on people in their apartment?”  “No, I am not,” Officer Mata responded.  During their visits, Officer Moreno and the woman talked in the bathroom most of the time, Officer Mata said, while he sat on the sofa in the living room and watched television or napped.  Ms. Balbert asked Officer Mata why they were going to check on the woman if he believed that she could still walk and talk and did not need an ambulance.  “Ken was more concerned about her emotional state than he was about her physical state,” Officer Mata said.  Is the jury supposed to believe, Ms. Balbert asked, that a woman who was in the bathroom every time they returned to her apartment had the capacity to build a relationship with the officer?  “Correct,” Officer Mata said. “She was O.K. She was conscious.”
Police Officer Franklin Mata said he and his partner, Kenneth Moreno, committed no crimes during four visits to a drunken womanâs Manhattan apartment one night.