Alleged victim testifies on first day of Dartmouth alumnus’ rape trial
Published: 01-24-2025 9:53 PM
Modified: 01-26-2025 5:07 PM |
NORTH HAVERHILL — A 21-year-old female Dartmouth College student recounted in graphic detail how she was allegedly raped and strangled by a then-recent Dartmouth alumnus on the roof of a college fraternity nearly three years ago.
The woman’s testimony was challenged by the alleged assailant’s defense attorney, who sought to undermine her credibility by highlighting inconsistencies between statements the woman made to police and in testimony to the jury during the first day of the rape trial against Kyle Clampitt in Grafton County Superior Court on Friday.
Clampitt, 26, a 2020 Dartmouth graduate, is charged with 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault against the student who was an 18-year-old Dartmouth freshman at the time of the alleged rape in April 2022.
The trial, which will resume Monday, is expected to continue through the week with potential testimony from more than two dozen witnesses, some of them other Dartmouth students who interacted with the woman minutes after the alleged rape’s occurrence, according to court documents and state prosecutors.
The jury of 10 men and three woman — one of the jury alternates did not appear — sat expressionless as they listened to the woman testify for a total of 137 minutes under questioning from Grafton County Assistant State Attorney Amanda Jacobson and another 42 minutes of cross examination by Clampitt’s defense attorney, Robin Melone, of Concord.
The Valley News does not generally identify people who allege they are victims of sex crimes.
Jacobson, in her opening statement to jurors, said the woman “begged” Clampitt to stop, repeatedly saying “No” to the alleged sexual assault but he “ignored her plea … and paid no mind, even as she kicked him while he held her down.”
Melone, in her opening statement to jurors, said that what happened on the roof of the fraternity that evening between Clampitt and the woman was “consensual sex” and that she “consented with her actions. She consented with her words. She did not say ‘No.’ ”
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On Friday, the woman took the jury through a detailed description of the alleged sexual assault — she said she was subjected to violence on the roof from 90 minutes to two hours, including strangulation and having her hair pulled.
With her voice sometimes halting, the woman told the jury she had consumed several drinks in a friend’s dorm room before heading to a party at the Theta Delta Chi fraternity at 11 p.m. on April 23, 2022. During the party, she said she danced for a couple hours in the basement.
The woman said that although she was intoxicated from the alcohol she had consumed earlier in the evening she nonetheless was “quite functional.”
As she was leaving and waiting for a friend to return from the bathroom, the woman said, Clampitt — whom she did not know but she said introduced himself as a TDX “brother” — approached her and struck up a conversation. They talked for a bit when Clampitt “asked me if I wanted to see something cool on the roof like the stars,” she told jurors.
They stopped in a room on one of the upper floors and smoked marijuana with other students before climbing a ladder through a hatch to get onto the roof. The woman said once she got on the roof she heard the hatch door shut behind her and her “stomach dropped.”
Clampitt, she said, “scooped” her up and then attacked her.
Afterward, as soon as they descended the ladder, the woman said she approached another TDX fraternity member to protect her from Clampitt. That fraternity member provided her refuge in a room where she locked the door.
From the room, the woman made a Snapchat video of herself, which was played in court. The two-to-three second video shows her looking into the camera, crying, and saying “I got raped.”
The woman sent the Snapchat video to a friend, she testified.
Jurors were also shown photographs of the bodily injuries the woman sustained in the alleged rape that were recorded at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, where she went the next day for a medical examination.
Clampitt, originally from Bloomsbury, N.J., sat up straight at the defense table and dressed in a dark gray suit, blue shirt and striped blue tie, occasionally took sips from a water bottle. For most of Friday’s opening day court session, his parents were the only two people to occupy the 24 seats on the defendant’s side of the gallery.
More than half a dozen friends and supporters of the woman sat on the prosecution’s side of the gallery.
Melone, one of Clampitt’s two defense attorneys, used her cross examination to challenge the woman’s memory and credibility, by pointing out gaps and inconsistencies in statements she had made to police and testified about on Friday.
The alleged inaccuracies and inconsistencies included, among others, the number of alcoholic drinks she said she consumed that evening; the lack of visible injuries on some parts of her body that might be expected to have occurred from the assault the woman described; the building’s roofing material upon which she said she was assaulted; what happened to the ladder to when the hatch was closed; how she descended the ladder and the layout inside the TDX house.
The woman also acknowledged that she had intentionally omitted mention of smoking marijuana when pointedly asked by police in their investigation if she had consumed other substances on the evening on which she said she was raped. She said that reason she had “lied” was because she feared the legal consequences of acknowledging she had smoked marijuana, which is still illegal under New Hampshire law.
Although Melone did not broach with the woman on Friday the defense’s contention that sex between the parties had been consensual, any questions the defense can raise in jurors’ minds about the credibility of the main witness could weaken the ability of the prosecution to win a guilty verdict “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The trial resumes on Monday, with prosecutors having the option to put the witness back on the stand for a “redirect,” which is an opportunity for the prosecutor to counter any unfavorable testimony to their case that the defense elicited during its cross examination of the witness.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.