The account of being raped by five men comes from the notes of Gwendolyn Sutton, a Durham police officer who talked with the woman upon her arrival at the hospital. Officer Sutton’s report says the woman told her she had been dancing with three other women, “Nikki, Angel and Tammy.” Nikki was Ms. Roberts’s stage name, but there may have been a misunderstanding about the role of the two other women: Tammy was a dispatcher at Angel’s Escorts. The reference to five rapists has not been explained.

(Ms. Roberts has given contradictory accounts. On March 22, she told the police that the rape accusation was “a crock,” and that she had been with the accuser for all but five minutes of the party. Later, though, she revised her story to the police and told National Public Radio that a rape “could have happened,” but that she had not seen or heard it. Defense lawyers argued that she changed her story to suit an opportunity: on April 17, Mr. Nifong personally changed Ms. Roberts’s bail status on her probation violation, reducing her bond payment by $1,875.)

In her subsequent detailed accounts to doctors and detectives, files show, the accuser said she was raped vaginally, anally and orally by three men who called themselves Adam, Matt and Bret. She said these might not have been their real names. She said the men had called her racially pejorative names and had held, pushed and kicked her during the attack.

The woman gave a variety of accounts about what each of the men did during the alleged assault and in what order. For example, in initial statements, she said “Adam” had closed the bathroom door and told her “I’m sorry, sweetheart, you can’t leave.” But in her April 6 written statement to the police, she said “Matt” told her that. In two separate accounts, she also gave two different names of the man she said raped her orally.

Sergeant Gottlieb’s notes recount what Tara Levicy, the sexual-assault nurse, said of her encounter with the woman in the emergency room. “She stated the victim came in and was very apprehensive around the officers,” he wrote. “Once the officers left the room, it took her approximately 15-20 minutes to get her to calm down and open up. She stated the victim from that point on never changed her statement for over the 6-7 hour time period they were together.”

The nurse said the woman remained calm in her presence, but when Ms. Levicy left the room and a male nurse entered for some supplies, she reacted in a way that sexual-assault experts say is not uncommon among rape victims: she “began to scream hysterically.”

The Medical Evidence

The defense lawyers say there is no medical evidence that the woman was raped or assaulted. J. Kirk Osborn and Ernest L. Conner Jr., who represent Mr. Seligmann, filed a motion on June 7 accusing the authorities of misleading a judge about the strength of the medical evidence. They attached, under seal, the 23 pages of medical reports received through pretrial discovery. The first notes, by Dr. Joshua S. Broder and Duke hospital nurses, say the woman reported that she had been raped and complained of vaginal pain. A physical examination found no tenderness of the abdomen. She was “well nourished, visibly upset, crying, alert, cooperative, no acute distress.”