Four women testify about rape, attempted rape during Jacob Ewing preliminary hearing in Jackson County

HOLTON — Four women who say Jacob C. Ewing raped or attempted to rape them testified Thursday at the Jackson County man’s preliminary hearing.

After the judge amended counts Thursday, Ewing was charged with four counts of rape, one count of attempted rape, five counts of aggravated criminal sodomy and several counts of battery, a Jackson County prosecutor said.

A fifth woman will take the stand for the first time Aug. 30 for a separate preliminary hearing. An arraignment for five sets of charges is scheduled for 9 a.m. Sept. 21.

Ewing, 21, sat calmly in an orange jail shirt and shackles while the women gave detailed and somber accounts of crimes they say happened between September 2014 and May of this year. He rarely turned to face the nearly 40 people gathered in the court room.

Jackson County Attorney Shawna Miller commended the women's bravery during a break in the hearing.

"These are things you wouldn't want to tell your doctor let alone a room full of people," she said.

A woman in her early 20s testified she had gone in January 2014 to Ewing’s mobile home to tell him she no longer wanted to have a sexual relationship with him. She told the court she believed he had coerced her into doing things she didn’t want to do in the past and wanted that to end.

In Ewing’s bedroom he began to “act like he wanted sex” and pushed her with both hands onto the bed, she said. She slid to the floor, knocking her head on something. She recalled Ewing being on top of her and trying to remove her jeans.

She repeatedly told him to stop, yelling louder each time, but he continued.

After telling him she had a headache and wanted to leave, he stopped, she said. She called a friend to pick her up.

“I told her I almost got raped but I didn’t want to talk about it,” she said.

The woman didn’t talk to police until June after a close friend said she had a similar encounter with Ewing.

During cross examination, defense attorney Kathleen Ambrosia asked the woman why she hadn’t chosen a different location to talk about ending the relationship.

The woman said she didn’t suspect Ewing would be so forceful and that the bedroom was where the pair spent the most time.

Another woman in her early 20s and an 18-year-old who said Ewing had raped her took the stand, Miller said.

The woman in her early 20s spoke for nearly two hours, something Miller said is uncommon for a preliminary hearing.

“This isn’t a normal case though,” Miller said.

During her testimony the woman said she was unconscious or physically unable to fight off Ewing.

A fourth woman, a 35-year-old who had babysat Ewing, testified for most of the afternoon. She told the court she drove from Lee’s Summit, Mo., on a Saturday night in January after Ewing invited her to drink and play cards at his Holton home. After two drinks, she said she began to feel disoriented, hazy and dizzy.

She went into a bathroom that connected to Ewing’s bedroom, she said. Ewing joined her there and they went into his bedroom to have sex. However, the woman told the court the last thing she remembered was undressing and hitting her head hard on a wall.

The next morning she woke naked on top of “soaked” towels on Ewing’s bed. The woman had originally planned to stay with Ewing through Thursday, and didn’t immediately realize anything was wrong. She cleaned the house and cooked dinner.

By Monday, she told the court, she noticed bruising on her inner thighs, legs and buttocks. That morning she and Ewing had an argument and he took her keys to work with him, preventing her from leaving.

A month later, after she had moved back to Holton, she returned. She had fought with her mother and felt she had nowhere else to stay, she said. At Ewing’s home he became forceful with her and choked her. During sex she repeatedly said variations of “ouch,” she said, but Ewing didn’t stop. Instead the sex became rougher, she said.

“I didn’t feel like I could stop him,” she said.

Judge Norbert Marek Jr. addressed the woman regarding discrepancies in her testimony.

“These are very serious charges. A man could go to jail for life,” he said. “In January did he rape you?”

“I didn’t say ‘no,’?” the woman said. “If I had, I don’t think he would stop.”

For this case Ewing was charged with aggravated kidnapping along with the sex crime charges of rape and aggravated sodomy.

Phil Mcmanigal, Jackson County Sheriff’s Office detective, testified that when he interviewed the woman, she told him she remembered having sex that night in January, and that in February Ewing had forced her into anal and oral sex — details absent from the woman’s testimony.

Based on that discrepancy, Ambrosia asked the judge to throw out all charges. Marek decided only to remove the charge of aggravated kidnapping. After hearing additional testimony from a woman who said Ewing had forced her into both oral and anal sex, an additional charge of aggravated criminal sodomy was added.

No other Topeka media were in the courtroom.