Alleged victim testifies at first day of rape trial in Butte

Kasey Faur

The alleged victim in a rape trial testified Monday that a Butte man — who was 45 years old at the time — knew she was 15 years old when he picked her and a friend up on a Butte street after a house party, gave her alcohol and had sex with her without her consent.

Prosecutor Ann Shea said in her opening statements that Jay Dee Davisson is guilty of rape because the legal age of consent in Montana is 16 and because the victim was “physically helpless and incapacitated” at the time of intercourse because she was drunk.

The Montana Standard is not naming the alleged victim to protect potential victims of sexual assault.

Jack Morris, Davisson's defense attorney, said in opening statements that the victim was 15 years and 348 days old on Aug. 2, 2020, when the alleged rape took place.

He also said the victim led Davisson to believe she was 20 years old at the time because she told him that and because she was out late at night with her 20-year-old friend.

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Morris also cited a toxicology report done on the alleged victim approximately 13 hours after she allegedly drank that showed no alcohol in her blood and urine, and told the jury of three women and nine men, “She made up this whole thing about drinking.”

The alleged victim said she went to a party on Park Street with two friends and left with one around 3 a.m. on Aug. 2. The two ran into Davisson, who she said picked them up in his car and drove them to the Flying J gas station in Rocker.

The friend, she said, knew Davisson because she was his daughter’s best friend.

After using the restroom at the gas station, the three got back in the car and Davisson offered her a bottle of R&R whiskey, according to the victim. She said she took a couple of drinks and the last thing she remembers is her friend pulling her onto her lap.

At 1 or 2 p.m., she woke up in the Red Lion Hotel in Rocker wearing a men’s black shirt that wasn’t hers without underwear or pants on, and she couldn’t find her phone. She found a note Davisson wrote her with $30 for a cab, and a tooth brush.

She found her pants and shoes and took a cab that a Red Lion employee called for her. She was eventually taken to St. James Healthcare by her best friend’s mother, where she got a rape kit done and a blood and urine test.

The victim said she’d met Davisson one other time, on July 27, 2020, when she, the friend she walked home from a party with and another friend — who was 15 at the time — went to his room at the Red Lion so he could buy them alcohol.

The friend who was 15 at the time confirmed in testimony Monday that she told police shortly after the alleged rape that she and the victim told Davisson they were 15 when they met him on July 27.

Others who testified Monday included the former Red Lion general manager who called the victim a cab, the nurse who administered the rape kit, the best friend’s mother who took the victim to the hospital and the forensic toxicology supervisor at the Montana Forensic Science Division, Elizabeth Smalley.

Smalley testified that marijuana and methamphetamine were detected in the victim’s urine from the samples she gave at the hospital Aug. 2, but alcohol wasn’t. The toxicology report was also negative for all the drugs the Montana State Crime Lab tests for that are used as date rape drugs.

She said that given what she was told, she would’ve expected to find some alcohol in the victim’s urine. Smalley also said the fact the test was negative for alcohol can’t definitively discount that the victim consumed alcohol 13 hours before, because a variety of factors determine how quickly alcohol leaves the system.

The victim said that while she did drink alcohol and smoke marijuana, she didn’t ingest methamphetamine on or around Aug. 2.

District Judge Robert Whelan is presiding over the trial.

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