If it's not no, then is it yes?

The traffic stop that ended with rape began one morning in April 2009, a 21-year-old woman told a jury Thursday. Anthony Rollins, the former Anchorage police officer charged with sexually assualting her and five others, sat at the defendant's table.

The young woman said she was pulled over for tailgating and flashing her bright headlights at another car. When the officer asked her if she had been drinking, she said yes. Earlier in the evening, she had a few shots. After that, she fought with her boyfriend. He broke up with her. She was coming back home from dropping him off in Muldoon. She had been crying as she drove. When a car cut her off, she got mad and started tailgating. She wasn't really mad at the other motorist, she testified. She was really upset about the breakup.

She took a field sobriety test given by one officer and ended up in the back of a patrol car that belonged to Rollins. She recognized him, she told the jury. She'd gone to school with one of his children. He used to come to talk with her elementary school class.

He tried to calm her down as they drove, she said. She was crying and scared. He told her she was pretty. That she shouldn't be mistreated by anyone. By the time she got to the downtown police substation, she felt comfortable enough to joke around a little as they went to the small room where she was going take a breath test.

She was in handcuffs. She took a seat. He turned on a recorder. They did an official interview. She took her breath test. Her halter top slid down, exposing her bra. He pulled it up for her. She started to feel uncomfortable. Her breath test results came back. She was well below the legal limit. He stroked her face and her hair. He turned the recorder off. He asked about her tongue ring and whether she liked to perform oral sex.

She didn't, she told him. She was still in handcuffs.

Then, she testified, he took out his penis and a condom. She couldn't believe it. They couldn't do that there, she said. He could lose his job, she said. Weren't there cameras?

He told her no one was going to see. And then he forced himself on her.

She didn't scream or tell him to stop. She didn't fight. It was over quickly. And soon her mom was there to pick her up. She was 19 at the time. Later she told her friends what happened. She didn't use the word rape. She didn't tell the police.

Rollins' attorney, Susan Carney, didn't dispute that Rollins had intercourse with the young woman, but she wants the jury to believe the young woman asked for it. She wants the jury to believe that Rollins, who has been charged with sexually assaulting six women while on the job, is only guilty of "sexual dalliances" at work.

In a few cases, she wants the jury to believe the women made everything up.

"You didn't tell him 'no,' did you?" Carney asked the young woman on the stand.

Carney asked if she ever texted Rollins that she was considering taking a job as a stripper. The young woman said, "No." But the implication hung there.

Carney's job is to plant seeds of doubt. She's doing it by any means necessary, including trying to scare up outdated attitudes among the jurors about how a woman might be responsible for a man's predatory behavior. It's a tired tactic that ignores the power imbalance between a 19-year-old and a cop. If it works with a jury in 2011, it's a sad sign about a woman's place in the world.

It wasn't hard to read between the lines during Carney's cross-examination. Had the young woman thought about work as a stripper? (Was she promiscuous?) Carney read some of what the young woman told a grand jury earlier about the rape. She blamed herself for what happened. If she had fought and said no, she said earlier, Rollins probably would have stopped. (So, did that mean the promiscuous woman really said yes?)

One problem for Carney is that she has to make this kind of argument about six women. To believe it, you'd have to think the world is full of women who want to have sex with police officers they don't know. Doesn't it seem more likely that there was one cop taking advantage of vulnerable women?

I could tell from the young woman's testimony that she had a hard time making sense of what happened at first. If Rollins hit or threatened her with a weapon, then it would have been clear. Maybe she would have told her friends she'd been raped or gone to the police right away. But it wasn't that clear. The girl didn't want to have sex, she said in court. But she didn't fight him.

I think Rollins was counting on that. He knew he didn't need to use violence. He had an invisible weapon. It was in his position as a police officer. It was in his uniform, a symbol of trust. His word was more powerful than hers. He could take her to jail if he wanted to. He weighed almost twice as much as she did, and he was twice her age. She was shocked, emotional and scared. She was still in handcuffs. He had a gun on his hip.

Maybe she didn't exactly say no. But that doesn't mean she said anything close to yes.

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