The Rapist from the Internet Chat Room

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

   Alleged `Cybersex' Victim Testifies 
   By SAMUEL MAULL, Associated Press Writer
   
NEW YORK -- A woman who says a graduate student she met online tied her up
and raped her in his apartment tearfully described for jurors how she
begged, "Don't rape me, don't dismember me, don't kill me" before escaping.

   In emotional testimony Tuesday, the 22 -year-old woman said she managed
to untie herself from a futon, fight off her assailant and flee.

   "I was sore.  I was exhausted.  I didn't want to move," she said, then
describing how she loosed the cloth strips:  "I felt so good!  I got it
undone and I stood up!  I got it undone!  I looked at him and he looked
frightened!  I'm not going to die!"

   The witness, who said she was naked while tied up, said she grabbed her
clothes and got dressed while running for the door and fighting off the man
who had held her as a sex captive for more than 20 hours.

   "He tried to catch me," she said.  "I just kept fighting.  I wouldn't
let him get any part of me.  I ran to the door and clenched the handle
because I was not going to be tied up again."

   The woman says her tormentor was Oliver Jovanovic, 31, a Columbia
University doctoral candidate in molecular biology whom she met in an
Internet chat room.

   Jovanovic is charged with kidnapping, sodomy, aggravated sex abuse and
assault against the woman in his apartment following their first date Nov.
22, 1996.

   The woman said Jovanovic had tied her up, dripped hot candle wax on her
abdomen and genital area, bit her breasts until they bled and used a
nightstick to sexually abuse her.

   The woman said Jovanovic attacked her after a discussion about good and
evil and became upset when she said she believes people are not inherently
evil.  He then ordered her to undress, she said.

   Defense lawyer Jack Litman said no violence occurred between the two and
that any sexual activity, while it might have been unusual, was consensual.

   He quoted from e-mail messages sent by the woman to Jovanovic before and
after their date in which she talks about sadomasochism in what appear to
be terms of approval.

   The e-mail messages the woman sent to Jovanovic included one that reads
"Rough is good," and another that reads "I would go through the pleasure of
hell's pain."

   The woman testified that she sought out Jovanovic because she thought he
was intelligent, knowledgeable and interesting.

   Litman called the woman unstable and overly imaginative.  He said she is
blaming the evening's activity on Jovanovic to absolve herself of something
she likes but considers dirty.