A teenager who claims she was raped by a state law enforcement officer on New Year’s Day 2016 on a Hilo beach testified Monday that she didn’t tell her stepmother about the alleged incident because the teen “didn’t know how to deal with it.”
“I guess I was in shock,” the girl, now 17, told the jury of seven men and five women in the trial of Ethan Ferguson. The 40-year-old state Department of Land and Natural resources officer is charged with two counts of second-degree sexual assault and three counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and faces a possible 10-year prison term if convicted.
The teen identified Ferguson as her attacker. She said it was a “beautiful, sunny day” and she’d been watching turtles at the beach when Ferguson, who was in uniform, approached her at Lalakea Beach Park in Keaukaha as she was about to light up a pipe containing marijuana.
“He walked towards me and asked if I had been smoking something,” the girl said.
The teen said Ferguson took her pipe — with the pot still in the bowl — and her lighter and “put them in his pocket.”
“I thought I was going to get in trouble with my parents,” the girl said, crying. “… I thought he was going to take me in for smoking at the beach.”
The teen testified she thought she was being escorted to Ferguson’s vehicle when he told her he wanted to talk to her in the shade. She said he took her to “a grassy area with trees.”
“We stopped by the trees and he told me I had three options, which was money, drugs or sex,” the girl said. She said she didn’t have any money or any drugs other than the marijuana he’d already taken and that she was a virgin and didn’t want to have sex.
“He put his tongue in my mouth and I told him this wasn’t happening,” the alleged victim said. She said at some point, he put her on the mat, pinned her down with his body, pulled up her tank top and bikini top, performed sex acts on her and forced her to perform a sex act on him.
“I wanted it to stop. I was crying,” she said.
The teen said Ferguson gave her the still-full pipe back before he left without her.
“He kind of laughed and said I could finish smoking that bowl now,” she said.
The girl denied Ferguson warned her for harassing a green sea turtle but admitted to giving the officer a phony name. She said she went for a swim afterward “to clean myself up.”
“Why did you go into the water?” Deputy Prosecutor Haaheo Kahoohalahala asked.
“Because I felt dirty,” the teen replied, crying.
Mirtha Oliveros, Ferguson’s attorney, asked why the teen lied to the sexual assault nurse about taking drugs.
“Because I was there for having been sexually assaulted,” the girl said.
“Right,” Oliveros countered.
The alleged victim also admitted under cross-examination that she used her biological mother’s credit card to buy an airplane ticket to Hawaii to see her father as well as having taken “30 to 35” Tylenols the day before she was to be returned to her mother under a court order.
“Do you remember saying, ‘The only way I’m going back … is in a body bag’?” Oliveros inquired.
“Yes,” the girl answered.
“What was the purpose of taking the 30 to 35 Tylenols?” the lawyer queried.
“If I died, I’m not going back to live with her and if I didn’t die, hopefully, she’d get the point I didn’t want to live with her,” the teen said.
Ferguson’s supervisor at DLNR Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement, Officer James Weller, also testified. He said Ferguson hadn’t told him about the alleged incident.
“The first time I was told that there was any potential trouble was when I heard he got arrested, and I had to go to his house to recover his firearm,” Weller said. Weller said he went to Ferguson’s home twice more — to retrieve Ferguson’s state-issued vehicle and his uniforms.
There was no entry on Ferguson’s incident log for Jan. 1 about turtle harassment at Lalakea, although there was one at approximately that time at Carlsmith Beach Park. Weller testified there also was no written report submitted about the warning Ferguson allegedly issued the girl for harassing the endangered animal.
“If it involves an endangered species, I would require them to make a report,” Weller said, and added the reason is because DOCARE receives funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for endangered species patrols.
Ferguson, who is on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of his trial, was fired for misconduct by the Honolulu Police Department prior to his 2013 hiring as a state law enforcement officer. His mother, Jackie Ferguson-Miyamoto, is president of the Hawaii Government Employees Association, the union representing DLNR’s Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement officers.
Hilo Circuit Judge Greg Nakamura instructed jurors to return at 8:45 a.m. today.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
