Fake rape trial gets heated

Update 5 p.m. Wednesday A judge acquitted Arica Waters on all counts today. Click here for the update. Original post PORT CLINTON — A judge admonished a man who testified Tuesday about allegedly being falsely accused of rape after he failed to directly answer questions from a prosecutor. "Just a minute," visiting Judge Janet Burnside told the man. "He'll ask the questions and you'll answer them. We're not in a living room; we're in a courtroom." The witness, a former Put-in-Bay police detective, was accused by a fellow officer of rape after a pool party at his summer home in Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island on July 5, 2020. Arica Waters, 29, of Lyndhurst, is charged with making false alarms. She could be sentenced to 18 months in prison is she's convicted. The man testified that he and Waters agreed to have sex and she was not intoxicated at the time. He also tangled with the judge again after a defense attorney questioned him about whether he contacted the Put-in-Bay mayor about Waters. "You recommended to the mayor that Arica Waters be hired full time?" defense counsel Laura Dunn asked him. The man denied that and began equivocating about what he suggested to the mayor. "Just answer her question precisely," the judge told him. He finally answered, "Yes," when Dunn asked him if he informed Waters that he sent a message to the mayor. An earlier witness also had problems. Austin Lako, another former Put-in-Bay police officer, testified he was at the pool party and observed that Waters was not intoxicated. The defense counsel played a recording of an interview conducted by Ottawa County sheriff's Det. Sgt. Amy Gloor with Lako, however, in which he stated he was intoxicated and she also was intoxicated. Both the man Waters accused and former officer Lako acknowledged they had been drinking that day, but the special prosecutor, Drew Wood, still asked them for a professional opinion, as police officers, if they detected that Waters was intoxicated. Both testified she was not, but Lako later acknowledged she was intoxicated after the recording of him saying that was played. Gloor also took the witness stand Tuesday and testified, under cross examination, that she was the person who first suggested that Waters was raped. Waters did not say she was raped until after Gloor suggested it, according to testimony. Gloor also acknowledged on the witness stand that a urine sample taken during a medical exam, after Waters reported the rape, was never tested. A urinalysis could likely answer the question of whether or not Waters was too intoxicated to consent. It's not clear why the urinalysis was never ordered. "Is there a charge when there's nonconsensual penetration because a person is too intoxicated to consent?" Wood asked Gloor. "Yes," she replied. "What is that charge," Wood asked. "Rape," she said. Gloor testified she relied on text messages exchanged between Waters and the man, and Waters and others, in the hours after the pool party that she said indicates Waters was lying about being raped. But it's not clear that Burnside will allow the text messages to be admitted as evidence, at all, because there are questions whether they were gathered and reviewed properly. Burnside is expected to rule on that question early today. The man Waters accused testified he paid a private attorney more than $25,000 to defend him after the complaint was filed. The trial resumes 8:30 a.m. in Ottawa County's Court of Common Pleas.