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https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/news-gazette.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/a/4a/a4ac2f12-3860-5d04-979a-e940aa8a3ae3/603edaa5a8e1c.image.jpg

URBANA — The first jury to be seated in Champaign County in several months on Tuesday heard a case involving the alleged rape of a woman by her coworker, complicated by a foreign language and the passage of 18 months.

After deliberating about 75 minutes Tuesday, a jury convicted Junior Nyanguile, 39, who last lived in the 1300 block of North Lincoln Avenue, Urbana, of two counts of criminal sexual assault and acquitted him of a less serious count of criminal sexual
abuse.

Judge Roger Webber set sentencing for April 15. Nyanguile faces a mandatory prison sentence of eight to 30 years to be served at 85 percent time.

The facts of the case, according to the woman who reported the assault, were that she and Nyanguile had met at work at Dart Container Corp. plant in east Urbana about a month earlier and decided to “hang out” on Aug. 25, 2019.

The single mother of twins, who had recently moved to the area from Nebraska, said she knew Nyanguile only by his first name, “Junie,” and that she had given him a ride home from work once or twice.

On that Sunday afternoon, she said she dropped her then-3-year-old children at Crisis Nursery for babysitting while she went to socialize with him. She said she drove him to a nearby gas station where he bought vodka and she bought a cigar to be
repurposed as a marijuana blunt.

Back at his apartment, which had a common living area, the woman said Nyanguile asked that they smoke in his bedroom so as not to bother the other residents.

She said they drank, smoked and visited for about two hours when she decided to leave. She used the bathroom, washed her hands and gargled to diminish any cannabis odor before she picked up her children, she said.

Announcing her departure, she said Nyanguile pulled her toward him on to his bed, with her on top, and was caressing her.

“I was uncomfortable because it was our first time hanging out. I kept saying I needed to go pick up my kids,” she said.

The woman said when Nyanguile put his hand up her shorts and touched her genitals, she considered it “normal flirtatious man crap,” but told him no.

She said when he rolled over on top of her and pinned her hands above her head, using his weight to hold her down, her thought was: “This is for real. He is trying to rape me.”

She said as Nyanguile unbuckled his pants and began to penetrate her, she heard other voices but didn’t yell for help, not knowing if the roommates would help her or him.

“My only concern was that I had to get my kids,” she said, estimating she told him no 20 times.

When he had finished having sex with her, he went to the bathroom.

“I just remember being dazed on the edge of the bed. He asked if I was OK. I didn’t say anything,” she said.

She quickly left and he followed her to the door asking what was wrong.

She drove to Crisis Nursery, fearing that if she were late, officials there would call the Department of Children and Family Services to take her children.

Shaken, the woman told the workers there she had been sexually assaulted.

Police were called and she was taken to Carle Foundation Hospital, where samples were taken from her and she was interviewed by Urbana police Detective Dave Roesch.

Asked by Assistant State’s Attorney Scott Larson if she was telling the truth, she replied: “I don’t know this man. I have no reason to set this man up — at all. I don’t even know how to pronounce his last name.”

Roesch testified that he first questioned Nyanguile on Sept. 16, 2019, at the Urbana Police Department about what had happened.

Nyanguile, who hails from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told Roesch he had been in the country almost four years and understood English, even though French is his primary language.

Body-camera video of the interview, which was played for the jury of six men and six women, revealed that Nyangule repeatedly denied having sex with the woman.

“All we did was talking, hugging,” he said.

When Roesch told Nyanguile that the woman said he forced her to have intercourse and got specific about the details of the act, Nyanguile replied: “I don’t know why she would say that.”

Roesch took swabs of Nyanguile’s cheek cells to submit to the state crime lab for DNA analysis, explaining to him that if there had been no sex, then the lab would not find any of his his DNA, and the interview ended with Nyanguile leaving.

Roesch said in early February 2020, he received the results back from the lab that showed Nyanguile’s sperm was found in the woman and Nyanguile was arrested.

In a second Feb. 3, 2020, interview, Nyanguile told Roesch that because French is his first language, he didn’t fully understand what Roesch meant months earlier by “having sex.”

Confronted with the DNA results, Nyanguile admitted he had sex with the woman.

“My point was I did not force her,” he told the detective, adding that she never said no to him.

On cross-examination by Assistant Public Defender Lindsey Yanchus, Roesch said he did not seek the help of a translator.

Testifying in his own defense with the assistance of a French-speaking translator, Nyanguile maintained that in his interview with Roesch, he was confused by the concept of consent and force.

“She never said no to me. The only reason I would have stopped is if she said no, pushed me away or screamed,” he said.

In closing arguments, Larson said Nyanguile was lying to Roesch in the first interview, trying to minimize contact.

“At this point, he thinks it’s only his word against hers,” Larson said.

But once confronted with the DNA results, only then did Nyanguile claim he didn’t understand Roesch’s questions, the prosecutor said.

Larson said the woman had “no motive to invent. She stuck with it, the physical evidence matched and she came here one-and-a-half years later and pointed him out.”

But Yanchus said the woman was motivated to lie out of fear that DCFS might be summoned because of her late arrival at Crisis Nursery.

“Find me a mother who would not throw a casual hookup under the bus for her children,” she argued.

She said Roesch “could have had a French interpreter there in a heartbeat” at either interview.

https://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/courts-police-fire/urbana-man-faces-up-to-30-years-for-rape-of-coworker/article_befcd380-c5c0-56e4-9725-a141f75293a1.html

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