photo by: Chris Conde/ Journal-World

From left, defense attorney Christopher Joseph, Thomas J. Zarse, and defense attorney Dionne Scherff are pictured at a jury trial on June 9, 2022, in Douglas County District Court.

At a trial for a man accused of raping her, a former University of Kansas student testified that the man pushed her against the floor and assaulted her, and that she was so scared that she “just couldn’t move.”

“I was terrified,” the woman said in Douglas County District Court at the trial for Thomas John Zarse, which began on Thursday. “If I could have run, I would have. I wanted to.”

Zarse, 22, of Topeka, is charged with one count of rape, which is a level-one felony. As the Journal-World previously reported, he’s accused of assaulting the woman, who was 19 at the time, between Jan. 11 and Jan. 12, 2020, after she repeatedly said no to his advances.

In opening arguments, Zarse’s defense team — Christopher Joseph and Dionne Scherff — said that what happened between the woman and Zarse was consensual, and that the woman didn’t report the incident to authorities until October 2020.

District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, meanwhile, argued that the reason for the delay was that the woman was trying to handle the situation on her own, and then with the help of a priest at the St. Lawrence Catholic Center. When the woman found that she couldn’t handle the situation on her own, she reported the incident to police, Valdez said.

• • •

On Thursday, the woman testified that the incident happened right after she had returned from a religious conference in Arizona. She said she’d arrived home on Jan. 11, 2020, and invited a friend over at around 10 p.m. to catch up and drink some wine.

The woman said that her friend came over and then got a text from Zarse, his roommate, who wanted to join them. She said she didn’t object to that, because the three of them — all KU students at the time — had known one another since high school.

The woman said they each drank a couple of glasses of wine, and that Zarse’s roommate left just before midnight, leaving her and Zarse alone. She said she didn’t expect that Zarse would stay.

“I thought he would leave,” she said. “I didn’t invite him.”

The woman said Zarse then asked for some of the liquor she had in her house, and that they both drank it. She took one shot, and Zarse took more than one, she said. Zarse then sat beside her on the floor, leaned in and kissed her, she said.

After that, the woman said she pushed Zarse away and told him “no, we can’t do this” and that he had a girlfriend. But she said Zarse told her it was OK because he was going to break up with his girlfriend. The woman said that a few minutes later, Zarse kissed her again, and that this time he used his weight to push her flat on the floor and also put his hands down her pants.

That’s when she froze, she said: “I just couldn’t move.”

Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden asked the woman why she didn’t push Zarse off of her again. She said she couldn’t because she was so scared. She said she started silently crying, and that Zarse either didn’t notice or didn’t care that she was crying.

“I really don’t have words for what I was feeling,” she said.

• • •

The woman’s testimony was cut short when the court adjourned at 5 p.m., but she is expected to take the stand again when the trial resumes on Friday. A number of other people also testified on Thursday, including two of the woman’s friends who said they got text messages from her on the night of the incident asking for help. One of these friends said that she saw the woman in person the next day, and that the woman seemed distant and silent.

Also testifying was the priest at the St. Lawrence Catholic Center, Mitchel Zimmerman, who had been a counselor for her since about a year before the incident. He said that in August 2020, the woman told him that she had something she needed to discuss about Zarse, but that she didn’t have the courage to say what it was. Eventually, Zimmerman said he was able to set up a meeting between her and Zarse in the yard of the Catholic center’s rectory in October 2020.

At that meeting, Zimmerman said, the woman explicitly accused Zarse of raping her. Zimmerman said Zarse denied the allegation and told the woman that “nothing critical happened.”

Zimmerman said that enraged the woman, and that she told Zarse he needed to “be a man” and own up to what he had done. A few weeks after that, Zimmerman said, the woman reported the incident to the police.

Judge Kay Huff said the trial would resume at 9 a.m. on Friday. Closing arguments are expected by Friday afternoon.