LOS ANGELES (AFP) – NBA star Derrick Rose told a Los Angeles jury on Friday that his ex-girlfriend opened the door in her pajamas and invited him and two of his friends into her apartment for what he assumed would be a sexual encounter.
Rose gave a starkly different account Friday than the one the alleged victim told during earlier testimony in the $21 million sexual assault lawsuit brought against Rose by the woman.
Rose testified that he met the plaintiff, whose identity has been kept anonymous thus far, at a club in 2011 and had a ‘‘non-exclusive sexual relationship’’ with her for about a year and a half.
The eight-member jury must decide whether the woman, or Rose and co-defendants Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton, are telling the truth about the events on the night of August 26, 2013 at Rose’s Beverly Hills house and later at the woman’s apartment near downtown Los Angeles.
Rose told the jury Friday that the woman had sex with Hampton earlier at Rose’s house and then hours later the trio went to her apartment.
In her own testimony, the woman denied having sex with Hampton in the backyard of Rose’s house and said she did not invite them back to her place where the alleged assault took place.
Rose reiterated the defendants’ claim that the woman invited them to her house and the sex was consensual.
‘‘In my mind, she consented to every other time (the two of us) had sex, so why wouldn’t she this time,’’ Rose testified.