Jurors hear rape defendant’s apology

WEST CHESTER >> The Gettysburg man accused of raping a former West Chester University student while she slept apologized to her profusely for what had happened between them after a night of St. Patrick’s Day drinking, jurors in the case heard during the woman’s testimony Tuesday.

But Tyler Hogan Lampe stopped short of admitting that he had forced himself on the woman sexually in her South High Street apartment two years ago, and told her he did not condone sexual assault.

“I am very sorry I did it,” Lampe told the woman on a telephone conversation he had with her about a month after the March 18, 2016 incident. “It is terrible that it happened. But I don’t remember doing it. If I could go back … I never would do anything like that.”

“I went to sleep with my clothes on, and I wake up with you on top of me,” the woman, whose name is being withheld by the Daily Local News because of the nature of the charges involved in the case, said confronting Lampe. “It’s bull that you could not know what you were doing.”

Lampe insisted that he was sorry. “I am being 100 percent honest,” he told her. “I really don’t remember.”

The conversation was tape recorded by West Chester Detective Stan Billie, unbeknownst to Lampe. The full 26 minutes was played for the eight women and four men on the jury during the more than four hours the woman was on the witness stand in Judge Patrick Carmody’s courtroom.

Lampe, 22, of Gettysburg, is charged with rape by forcible compulsion, rape of an unconscious person, both felonies, and sexual assault, indecent assault, and aggravated indecent assault. His attorneys have contended that what occurred between him and the woman was consensual sex between two intoxicated young people. He has been free on bail since

his arrest in July 2016, four months after the alleged assault. A former member of the West Point Black Knights football team at the U.S. Military Academy, he is currently on administrative leave from the prestigious school.

The woman testified that she had gone to sleep in her room on the third floor of an apartment house on South High Street sometime after 1 a.m. the morning after St. Patrick’s Day, intoxicated after a night of drinking at her home and a fraternity party near the WCU campus. She had not taken off her clothes before collapsing in bed, she testified, but awoke naked and with Lampe on top of her.

A friend of Lampe’s, Jacob Myers, who also attended West Chester University, was shouting and pulling Lampe from her, she said.

“I remember waking up to Jake Myers’ voice,” said the woman, who grew up in the Malvern area and who had been studying psychology at WCU at the time of the incident. “I remember a light coming in from the hallway. And I remember the defendant over the top of me.”

Under direct examination from First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone, the woman said that she had no intention of having sex with Lampe that night, even though she had commented to one of her roommates — who was hometown friends with him — that she found him attractive. But she said she was certain that he was having sexual intercourse with her when she woke up.

The woman reported the matter to WCU police and then borough police later that day after discussing the incident with her roommates, and underwent a long physical examination for sexual assault at Chester County Hospital. On April 12, 2016, she gave a full statement to Billie about what had occurred, and agreed to place a telephone call to him that would be recorded a week later.

Listening to the tape recording was clearly uncomfortable for the woman, whose composure was otherwise evident during her testimony, both on direct examination and cross. While the tape played, she kept her eyes closed and sometimes put her hands on her forehead as the jurors listened intently.

Lampe began their conversation by asking whether she was okay, “I just want you to know that I feel terrible about this entire thing,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

“What made you think it was okay?” the woman asked Lampe, to which he replied. “I don’t remember doing it. I swear to you I would never do something like that.”

During the conversation the woman hesitated to accuse Lampe directly of raping her. She asked, however, how he could not remember coming into her bedroom and assaulting her. “I would never do something like that of sober mind,” Lampe is heard saying. “But there was alcohol.”

Lampe said that he was sensitive to matters involving sexual attacks because a relative had experienced something similar. He said he had advocated against sexual assaults while a student. “I just can’t imagine I’d ever do something like that.”

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Arthur Donato, the woman maintained that she could not remember anything from the time she went to sleep — after waiting up for a boyfriend to come visit her — until she was awakened by Myers and one of her roommates in the room interrupting Lampe.

Donato peppered her with questions about seeming inconsistencies between her statements to police and a sexual assault nursing examiner, and how much she had told them based on what others had told her about what had happened. Donato has suggested that the woman “blacked out” during the night and would not have remembered consenting to have sex with lampe.

“A lot of the pieces had been filled in,” the woman explained, when asked if her roommate had informed her that she had been “raped,” rather than having any independent recollection of the events. “She was confirming what I knew.”

Myers, Lampe’s best friend from childhood, testified in the afternoon. He disagreed with the woman’s characterization of his having forcibly pulled Lampe off of her, and said instead that he had simply decided to interrupt their consensual lovemaking. The pair needed to get some sleep, he said.

“I said, ‘Screw it, I’m going in,’” Myers testified in animated fashion, noting that he had heard moaning from inside the woman’s room. “It was easy to tell what was going on. I said, ‘Let’s go to bed, bro.’ And he just got off and put his boxers on.”

Noone, treating Myers as a hostile witness after noting that he had refused to cooperate with the prosecution following an initial interview with Billie, asked why Myers had called two friends soon after the incident around 2:45 a.m., before leaving the apartment to take Lampe back to his dorm room on the WCU campus. Myers said he had wanted their advice because the woman’s roommate was accusing Lampe of raping her.

“We were all freaking out, because no one knew what was going on. It makes you freeze up when someone accuses someone of rape,” he said.

Noone, however, suggested that Myers had been looking for help because he had just learned that his friend, “had just done something he never should have done.”

“Noooo,” Myers exclaimed. “It was consensual. You can’t just throw rape out there. That is so detrimental to someone.”

Testimony is expected to continue Wednesday.

Tyler Hogan Lampe