Photo credit: Seth Wenig/ Associated Press

A onetime friend of Jane Doe took the stand Friday, testifying for Derrick Rose’s side in the civil suit accusing him and two friends of gang-rape in 2013. In her testimony on Friday, Gabriela Chavez repeatedly called her former friend a liar and said she came forward because she wanted to be on the side of truth.

Chavez said she had been friends with Doe since 2008, but they last saw each other in 2014. The last time they talked or texted was earlier this year, she said. Much of her testimony was about a trip she took with Doe to Las Vegas in September 2013, about a month after Doe said in her lawsuit she was raped by Rose and two of his friends in her Los Angeles apartment. Before going over the details of the trip, Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald told jurors that they could only use the testimony “simply as to damages” and that it was not “relevant to which version of events at the apartment is true.”

After that warning from Fitzgerald, Chavez launched into testimony in which she called Doe a liar multiple times. She went into the details about the September trip after several pictures of her and Doe in Las Vegas were entered into evidence, showing Chavez and Doe smiling, hanging out by a pool, and in bathrobes. She said that during the trip Doe seemed happy and normal. Doe told her that during the trip that she had sex with Rose and his friends, but was upset that she hadn’t heard back. Chavez told the court, “She specifically said he didn’t even care that I slept with them.”


Chavez said in court that the story as Doe told it didn’t make sense to her, so she asked Doe specifically if she was raped. Her response, Chavez said, was, “No, but I did have sex with all of them.”



During cross examination, Chavez said Doe didn’t use the word consensual but “her entire story didn’t make sense.”


Like the defense’s cross examinations earlier in the day, Doe’s lawyer Waukeen McCoy peppered Chavez with questions about if she was doing this for money. He asked Chavez several times and different ways if she had tried to get money from Doe for her testimony, which Chavez repeatedly said was wrong, adding, “That’s why I’m on the side of truth right now.”

McCoy asked her so many times about money, Chavez replied to one: “Is that the best you are going to keep doing, asking the same question?”


Many of her answers to questions, like if Doe took a sick day to go to Las Vegas and how she contacted Rose’s lawyer, ended with her calling Doe a liar. At one point, she said Doe “lies about everything that comes out of her mouth.” Even Doe’s desire to stay anonymous was about maintaining lies, she said.

“She lies to her family all the time. They don’t know the lifestyle she leads in Los Angeles,” Chavez said. “And she wanted to keep it that way.”


Chavez said Doe at some point had told her about another rape lawsuit, involving Sean Kingston, that had settled and that she too would settle with Rose for money. Chavez said a text message sent to Doe after she heard about the lawsuit being filed—saying “Hey girl. You ok?” and asking if it was Doe or someone else “it happened to”— was just her checking in because she had been wondering if Doe would file.

“She told me quite a few times that she was confused and didn’t know what to do,” Chavez said, adding that it was because so many people were telling Doe different things.


When Rose’s lawyer, Mark Baute, asked Chavez if Doe is a “pathological liar,” Chavez said yes. She ended her testimony saying she had dinner with Rose in 2015, and the meal lasted a few hours.