By Lacey Johnson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawyers for three U.S. Naval Academy football players accused of rape will resume their attack on Friday on the credibility of a female midshipman who urged the cadets to lie to investigators to avoid being forced to leave school.
The woman, now a senior at the elite military school at Annapolis, Maryland, is set to testify for a third day during a preliminary hearing that will determine whether the case should proceed to a full court-martial.
The men - Tra'ves Bush, 22; Eric Graham, 21; and Joshua Tate, 21 - are accused of sexually assaulting her last year while she was passed out after drinking at an off-campus party.
The hearing follows a spate of high-profile military sexual assault cases, including some involving personnel whose job it was to prevent sexual abuse.
During cross-examination on Thursday, Bush's attorney Andrew Weinstein presented a two-minute telephone recording between Tate and the woman in which she asked him to lie to Navy investigators during the early stages of the case.
"I need you to say nothing happened," the woman said during the call recorded by Tate. "I hate to ask you to lie, but I don't want this to go anywhere."
The woman, who was a 20-year-old sophomore at the time of the alleged incident, has testified that she did not want to get anyone in trouble.
She said she also told Graham to lie during the initial investigation because she did not want the case to proceed.
She has said she feared her mother would force her to leave the highly selective school, which educates Navy and Marine officers. Students are known as midshipmen.
Weinstein challenged contradictory statements made by the woman to Navy investigators in September 2012. They included one that she had "13 seconds of memory relating to sexual activity" that night, something she denied on Wednesday.
The woman contradicted an interview she gave to CNN in which she said the three men had pressured her not to cooperate with investigators. She testified that Tate had been the only one to do so.
Weinstein grilled the woman on her sexual history with Bush, with whom she earlier had a consensual sexual relationship, and about her drinking. She testified she had started drinking at 17.
Under later questioning by Graham's attorney, Lieutenant Commander Angela Tang, the exhausted-looking midshipman burst into tears several times when she was asked if she felt in physical danger during the investigation.
She also admitted lying when she told a counselor that she had had two drinks at the party. On Wednesday she said she had drunk at least seven shots of rum.
Reuters generally does not report the names of sexual assault victims.
(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Eric Walsh)
http://news.yahoo.com/female-u-naval-cadet-set-third-day-testimony-090112995--nfl.html
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