News Photo by Julie Riddle Defendant Andrew Swoffer-Sauls, right, charged with assault and criminal sexual conduct against a minor, confers with his attorney Tuesday during a jury trial in Alpena’s 26th Circuit Court Tuesday.

ALPENA — A young girl was hit, kicked, and sexually assaulted by a 20-year-old Alpena man, she told a jury on the opening day of a trial for Andrew Swoffer-Sauls in Alpena’s 26th Circuit Court on Tuesday.

The 15-year-old girl, fighting back emotion and sometimes hiding her face as she talked, told the listening jury about the afternoon in August when she went in search of a basketball pump and ended up staggering down a sidewalk, her legs red with fresh handprints.

The News does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

According to testimony of the girl and several other witnesses who described the incident, the girl, her sister, and another girl were enjoying time at a park on Alpena’s north side on Aug. 7 when their basketball went flat.

Hoping to inflate the ball, the alleged victim and her sister agreed to go into the house of Swoffer-Sauls — whom the girls vaguely knew as boys from the neighborhood — where he and a visiting friend, Charles Sweet III, led them to Swoffer-Sauls’ bedroom.

Witness accounts say the two males began to make crude comments to the girls, throwing condoms at them and insinuating that the alleged victim should have sex with them.

Sweet, a minor, is facing charges related to the incident in juvenile court.

After her sister left the house, the boys closed the door, tried to make her take some pills, and pushed her onto her back on the defendant’s bed, the alleged victim said.

There, she said, she was kicked in the back and between the legs. Her legs were forced apart, and the boys touched her vaginal area and chest through her clothing, she told the jury through tears. She said at one point Swoffer-Sauls tried to touch her beneath her clothing.

Before the alleged aggression on the bed, the boys asked to “five-star” the girl, she said, referring to a juvenile fad involving slapping someone’s back hard enough to leave a lasting handprint showing all five fingers.

The girl refused, but they hit her legs instead, she said. When she left the house later, her thighs were covered in red handprint welts, as attested to by city police officers who responded to the scene.

The girl recounted hiding in a downstairs room to avoid the boys, then running out a back door and over a fence. Her sister and the other girl, who had come looking for her, saw her staggering down the sidewalk, crying and almost incoherent, they said.

The alleged victim told the jury that, when she was in the house, she was afraid “something else was going to go down.” When Alpena County Assistant Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski pressed the point, the girl said she feared she would be raped.

Swoffer-Sauls is charged with assault with the intent to commit sexual penetration, fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct involving the touching of private parts either under or on top of clothing for a sexual purpose using force or coercion, and aggravated assault.

To get a guilty verdict on all three counts, the prosecution will have to prove the defendant intended penetration with one of several body parts — whether or not the penetration occurred is irrelevant to the charge stated — among other points.

The defendant also faces a stalking charge, related to several incidents in the weeks following the event, reported by several witnesses, in which he and several other people passed the girl’s house, screaming obscenities and calling her a liar.

Swoffer-Sauls maintains his innocence, his attorney, Ron Bayot, told the jury, and claims the girl never entered his house. She and his family were harassing him, he told police.

As of the end of the day on Tuesday, Muszynski said she probably would not call any more witnesses but reserved the right to do so when the trial continues today. Bayot, who had no questions for most of the prosecution’s witnesses, will present a defense when the trial resumes, concluding with attorneys’ closing arguments before the case is given to the jury for deliberation.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.