Rape case dismissed after alleged victim a no-show
Rape and related charges against an Upper Darby man were dismissed without prejudice after Assistant District Attorney Meghan Rafter said the alleged victim refused to testify for the prosecution.
Richard Campoverde, 30, had also been charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, indecent assault, simple assault, false imprisonment and unlawful restraint in the alleged May 2022 rape of a 25-year-old woman inside a home on the 100 block of Cunningham Avenue.
Campoverde, represented by defense counsel Perry DeMarco Sr., had been scheduled for trial April 1, but Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Scanlon delayed the case until Friday at the request of the prosecution.
“In light of the fact that the commonwealth has used its utmost efforts, it used reasonable efforts and herculean efforts to get the victim in here, clearly the victim will not cooperate or participate in the prosecution,” he said Friday. “The court will dismiss these charges without prejudice.”
Campoverde was previously held over for court in July 2022 following a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge John Perfetti.
The alleged victim told Assistant District Attorney Melanie Reynolds at that time that she had gone to a house on the morning of May 23, 2022, to hang out with Campoverde, who she has known for years.
A fight eventually ensued in which the woman said she splashed water on Campoverde and threw a wine glass, shattering it. Campoverde began raining down blows on her while she laid in a fetal position on the floor, “like he was beating up a guy from the street, basically,” she said.
“He grabbed me, he beat the crap out of me … and then he told me, he said, ‘Oh, before you leave, you’re going to give me some …,’ ” the alleged victim said.
She said Campoverde then dragged her by her hair into a room with broken glass on the floor and put her on all fours, pulled her underwear and his pants down while holding her with one hand, and sexually assaulted the victim.
“If I didn’t do what he told me to do, he would keep hitting me and hitting and hitting me in the back of the head,” she said. “It got to the point where he was like, ‘You better act like you freaking like it.’ Any time that I cried or screamed or anything like that, he would hit me.”
The entire beating and rape took about 30 minutes, the alleged victim said, though for her it felt like “centuries.” She said Campoverde did not use a condom and she was unsure if he ejaculated. By the end, the alleged victim said she was covered in bruises and bleeding from cuts on her arms and legs that had been pressed into the broken glass.
The woman said she remembered screaming and Campoverde pushing her into a corner, then getting dressed and Campoverde helping her wash the blood off her arms. At that point, she said she felt she had two choices: Call the police or do him some “serious damage.”
She opted to call the police but said Campoverde did not seem concerned and was even cocky about it.
When police arrived, the woman said they immediately ordered Campoverde to the ground and arrested him. The alleged victim said she was still visibly bleeding and was taken to Lankenau Medical Center, where a rape kit was performed, along with tests for sexually transmitted infections and a CT scan of her head.