KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) A prosecutor in the trial of former University of Tennessee football players A.J. Johnson and Michael Williams says they used their status as athletes to rape a woman in a ”case about power, privilege and protection.”
Defense lawyers countered that the woman voluntarily had sex with both men before lying out of embarrassment.
The aggravated rape trial for Johnson and Williams finally got underway Monday, nearly four years after the incident in question. Johnson was a linebacker and Williams a defensive back for Tennessee when a woman says both men raped her in the early-morning hours of Nov. 16, 2014. Both men were suspended less than 48 hours later and never played for Tennessee again.
”They pass her back and forth like a rag doll,” Knox County deputy district attorney general Kyle Hixson said. ”To them, that’s all she was.”
Defense lawyers offered a starkly different account of what happened during a party at Johnson’s apartment in the early morning hours of Nov. 16, 2014 – hours after a Tennessee home victory over Kentucky.
David Eldridge, Williams’ lawyer, said the woman agreed to have consensual sex with both players at the same time as long as they ”just don’t tell anybody, pinkie promise you won’t tell anybody.”
Defense lawyers say the woman changed her story only after she left Johnson’s bedroom, saw Tennessee wide receiver Von Pearson and realized she wouldn’t be able to keep what happened a secret. Stephen Ross Johnson, the lawyer for A.J. Johnson, said the woman then ”got locked into a lie that has caused her to make a false accusation.”
”As soon as she came up with that lie, it went beyond her control,” said Stephen Ross Johnson, who isn’t related to A.J. Johnson. ”She was made to call 911, and that’s when she lost control of her lie and became locked into it.”
The Associated Press typically doesn’t identify people who say they are victims of sexual abuse.
A.J. Johnson was a four-year starter for Tennessee’s football team. His 425 career tackles represent Tennessee’s second-highest total since the school started keeping track of that statistic in 1970. His invitation to the 2015 NFL Scouting Combine was rescinded after his indictment.
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