Attorney for former cop: Patrol-car sex with wanted woman was consensual

Xerxes Wilson | The News Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Wilmington police officer charged with rape, extortion Wilmington police Cpl. Thomas Oliver Jr. charged with rape, extortion and official misconduct

A former Wilmington Police officer does not deny receiving oral sex from a wanted woman inside his patrol vehicle but contends the encounter was consensual.

A jury began hearing testimony Tuesday in the trial of Thomas Oliver Jr., a former police patrolman who is accused of using his police authority to extort oral sex from the woman.

Oliver is charged with felony second-degree rape, sexual extortion, having sex with a person in police custody and official misconduct.

Prosecutors said Oliver was patrolling alone when he called his accuser, an adult woman and mother who was wanted at the time for misdemeanor assault charges, over to his marked police vehicle on East Ninth Street in the city on an evening in October 2018.

Deputy Attorney General David Skoranski said Oliver “forced” the woman into the passenger seat of his police vehicle and “forced” her to give him oral sex. He added that after the act concluded, Oliver “threw” three dollars at her and told her to leave.

“The only reason she did it is she thought she was under arrest and had no choice,” Skoranski said.

Court documents filed after Oliver’s arrest in February said the woman felt she had a choice: Perform oral sex or Oliver would arrest her for the outstanding warrant.

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"The allegation is that Mr. Oliver instilled a fear in (the accuser) that he was going to have her arrested for that warrant," Skoranski said.

A swab test later showed evidence of semen in the women’s mouth and Oliver’s DNA, Skoranski told the jury.

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Eugene Maurer, Oliver’s attorney, said his client, a 36-year-old divorcée and father with a decade of work with the police department, admits to making an “egregious and stupid” mistake by having sex with the woman while on duty, but said the encounter does not amount to second-degree rape, the most serious charge Oliver faces.

“Thomas Oliver does not deny it was wrong on one level, not a criminal level, for him to pursue his own personal pleasures while serving as a Wilmington police officer,” Maurer told the jury in his opening statement.

Maurer said the evidence will show his client “had consensual sexual intercourse” with the woman, who “he believed to be interested in him” and who he “believed to be a prostitute.”

Hours after the interaction, the woman told Wilmington Police she was raped by Oliver.

She was drunk during that initial interview. Maurer told the jury they will have to reconcile discrepancies in her initial statement to police, a second statement the following day and her words on the witness stand later this week.

He said there will be discrepancies in where the encountered occurred in the vehicle and what she said to Oliver.

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“When the subject matter of oral sex came up she will say that she basically said ‘OK, but I need three or four dollars,’ ” Maurer told the jury.

Maurer told the jury Oliver, who is out on bail, will testify in the trial.

“He will deny that he forced sex on anyone,” Maurer said.