photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Defendant Miquel Brown appears Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

The Douglas County District Attorney’s Office is asking a jury to convict a man of rape and criminal sodomy in a case where the alleged victim says she never said no, never told the man to stop, never was threatened, never called out to a person in the next room, never said anything at all and never tried to leave.

The 19-year-old woman testified on Tuesday that she simply lay still in the dark — in a kind of frozen state — during the sexual encounter on the older man’s living room couch. She told the jury — of eight men and six women with two alternates — that she trusted the man, regarded him as an older “brother,” though the two are not biologically related, and felt betrayed when she began to “grasp what had happened to me.”

She described that man, Miquel Brown, 33, as being a foot taller than her and outweighing her by more than 200 pounds.

“I was unsure what was happening,” the teen said, after testifying that Brown had removed her sweatpants and touched her genitals, while she remained silent. “I was scared that he might hurt me.”

She said he put his hand on her throat, but on cross-examination she said that he did not squeeze her neck, choke her or threaten her in any way.

She said that he moved her much smaller body into different positions without her assistance, had intercourse with her, then put her clothes back on her.

Defendant Miquel Brown, left, appears Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Douglas County District Court. Defense attorney Gary West is at right.

The incident occurred at the home of Brown and his then-girlfriend after the three had gone to “Emo Night” at a venue in downtown Lawrence on Oct. 26, 2024. The teen, then 18, stayed the night on the couch of the couple, both of whom were like family to her. She regarded the girlfriend “like a sister,” she said.

After the girlfriend went to bed in the early-morning hours, Brown remained in the living room with the teen and initiated sexual contact. The teen testified Tuesday that the touching began on her thigh, though at Brown’s preliminary hearing she had said it began with a foot massage and progressed gradually up her leg to genital touching, oral sex and intercourse.

The inconsistency was one of several that the defense pointed out — including on the subject of whether Brown gave her alcohol and whether he dressed her after the encounter or whether she took her clothes to the bathroom.

After the incident, the teen went to the bathroom, called her mom and asked to be picked up immediately. When the mom arrived, the teen was waiting outside. When she said she had been raped, the mom — who also testified Tuesday, telling jurors her daughter was “crying hysterically” — barged into the apartment and confronted Brown. She testified that he denied the accusation by saying of the teen, “Is she losing her mind?”

“I lost my mind,” the mother testified. “… I never struck him but was really upset.”

“There’s no way my daughter would have been that upset for no reason,” she said.

The mom then drove the teen to the hospital and reported the incident to police, who obtained a search warrant for both the apartment and for Brown’s DNA and brought him in for questioning.

The jury viewed a video of the nearly 40-minute police interview with Brown, in which he lied four times about what had happened and where he had been, an investigator testified. Eventually, Brown admitted that he had sexually touched the teen with his fingers and mouth but denied that intercourse had occurred.

“It obviously went too far,” he said in the video, “but it didn’t go too far, if that makes sense.”

He said that intercourse probably would have occurred but that his “brain clicked” and told him to step back. He said the teen had seemed “into” the touching and made noises that he interpreted as pleasurable moaning.

The man’s longtime girlfriend moved out of the house that day, she testified.

“I was really grossed out and upset … and shocked,” she told the jury, when she found out later that morning what Brown had allegedly done. She said Brown had tried to get her to serve as an alibi, saying “Don’t you remember me being asleep in there with you?” — a statement he also had made to police. She said she recalled no such thing.

As the video of Brown played in the courtroom, the ex-girlfriend could be seen vigorously shaking her head “no” at various things he said to the investigators.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Public defender Jessica Glendening questions a witness during the trial of Miquel Brown on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Douglas County District Court. Judge Sally Pokorny is pictured at left.

In her opening argument Tuesday, Brown’s defense attorney, Jessica Glendening, told jurors that they must focus on “facts, not feelings.” They might feel that Brown’s conduct was uncomfortable or even “taboo,” she said, but the facts were that the activity was consensual and that “no crime occurred.”

The teen never did anything to indicate that she was overcome by force or fear, Glendening said, eliciting a string of “No’s” from the teen when asked whether she was pressured or threatened or ever indicated to Brown verbally or physically that he should stop and that she did not consent.

Glendening said that Brown ended the intimate encounter not long after it had begun, short of intercourse, because he experience a moment of “clarity” when he realized that he was cheating on his girlfriend. He lied to the police, she said, because he was ashamed, not because he was guilty of a crime.

Glendening and co-counsel Gary West indicated that the teen talked to Brown’s dog, telling it to go away, as Brown was undressing her, attempting to undermine the teen’s contention that she was frozen with fear and couldn’t speak.

The defense also questioned the teen’s statement that the room was so dark that she couldn’t tell what was going on, eliciting admissions that the TV was on 10 feet away and the adjacent kitchen light was on.

The prosecution, represented by Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal and Assistant DA Britt Welch, said the case was about “betrayal” — of a teen by a 32-year-old, physically imposing man who was in a position of trust to her. The teen didn’t say anything during the encounter “because she was terrified,” Welch said, but she quickly called her mom and reported the incident to police the same day.

“I was scared,” the teen testified. “I didn’t know what to do,” adding that she thought she might be harmed physically for resisting in any way and just wanted to get through the ordeal.

Also testifying Tuesday was a KBI forensic scientist who said that testing showed seminal fluid was “indicated” on vaginal swabs of the teen and that the DNA was consistent with Brown’s — testimony that presumably will inform the jury’s decision about whether intercourse or something else had occurred.

The state rested its case Tuesday, and the trial will resume Wednesday morning, when the defense intends to call witnesses.