pCANTON — Tension was thick in St. Lawrence County Court Monday afternoon as the teenage girl allegedly raped and sexually abused by Mark A. Hartle took the stand./ppThe 16-year-old entered the courtroom, wringing her hands, and quickly moved to the stand after being sworn in, her eyes focused on District Attorney Mary E. Rain who began questioning her about her relationship to Hartle, who had been known to her at the time of the 2014 alleged rapes and sex acts./ppHartle, 49, of 48 Smith St., is charged with having sexual contact and sexual intercourse by forcible compulsion with a then-15-year-old girl during the summer of 2014 in the towns of Gouverneur and Rossie. /ppHe was indicted on five counts of first-degree criminal sexual act, five counts of third-degree criminal sexual act, four counts of first-degree rape, four counts of third-degree rape, and 10 counts of first-degree sexual abuse, all felonies. Hartle was also indicted on three counts of misdemeanor third-degree sexual abuse./ppThe girl echoed Ms. Rain’s opening remarks from that morning, telling the district attorney that she had been camping on property her family owned in Rossi when Hartle had been making unsolicited advancements with lewd remarks, calling her “beautiful” and insinuating he wanted to have sex with her./ppShe said that there had been multiple times that summer where she had been left alone with Hartle and she didn’t feel comfortable telling her parents. She said her father had previously brushed off allegations of abuse her sister had made to him and she didn’t think he would believe her./ppEach encounter was met with resistance, she told Ms. Rain, but it was when she was asked about details of the first night Hartle allegedly raped her in his Smith Street trailer that the girl cracked, breaking down in tears at the recollection of the night she said Hartle grabbed her off of his couch and told her to go with him to his bedroom, /pp“I said no, that I was tired ... I extended my arms, fell back into the couch and he kept pulling me,” she told Ms. Rain. “I didn’t want to go to his bedroom because I knew what was going to happen.”/ppShe said she didn’t yell out to her brother who was passed out drunk in a room in the back of the trailer, mostly because she was “scared, frozen,” calling it “an outer body experience.”/ppShe said she didn’t have a choice in going to Hartle’s house and that she would rather have been left at the camp, but that wasn’t an option./ppNor was it an option the other nights that she ended up there with her father, sister and brother, during which, if she wasn’t raped, she was fondled or abused by Hartle, all while her family was sound asleep./ppShe told Ms. Rain that she is a part of a family of heavy sleepers, and that she felt that yelling would have been fruitless./ppEven when she was at her camp in Rossi, she said she couldn’t escape Hartle’s clutches./ppShe said on an instance when her father was out farming and her brother was away, she was left alone in the camper when she was showering, she said Hartle appeared in the bathroom and pulled her into the neighboring room where there was a bed and fondled and had sex with her./pp“I told him to let me shower, he said he wasn’t leaving until he was done with me,” the girl said. “I tried to put my clothes on and he kept pulling them away ... He pulled me to the bed and said it will be really quick.”/ppJurors shifted in their seats throughout the testimony, several of them glaring at Hartle, who, on occasion, sat with a grin on his face. When he joined his Syracuse defense attorneys Emil M. Rossi and Michael Spano at the bench for a conference, the girl looked away from him, hiding her face in her long parted hair./ppBut when Mr. Spano asked her if she chose to be alone with Hartle she said she did, just as she decided to repeatedly return to the camper each weekend instead of staying home with her mother in her home outside of Rochester./ppAnd although she continued to return, she said she always felt uncomfortable, was afraid of Hartle and always resisted him./ppShe said she chose to go to the camp every weekend to have fun, and that she never chose to be abused by Hartle./pp“It’s safe to say that was the defendant’s choice,” Ms. Rain said./ppThe alleged victim’s mother also took the stand, breaking down in tears when she was asked to identify Hartle in the courtroom. /ppDuring his opening statements, Mr. Rossi asked the jury of eight women and four men to consider the lack of physical evidence in the case, asking, “Were items made available to investigators for testing? Clothing? Bedding in Mark’s place?”/ppThe young woman’s mother told Mr. Rossi during her testimony that she bagged up bedding and quilts from her camper and gave it to investigators./ppMs. Rain said she will be resting her case today following the expected testimony of the alleged victim’s brother./p
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