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In an interview, the victim said she’s anxious for the case to end after two trials and two appeal hearings.

“It has been dragging out for way too long,” the woman told this newspaper. “It’s a constant burden on my mind. It’s always in the back of my mind: It’s not over. It’s not over.’”

In court, the woman has testified that she went to the Brockville party with her boyfriend, and that they fell asleep together on a double air mattress on the kitchen floor at about 2:30 a.m.

She woke up sometime later with pain in her buttocks, her belt undone and her pants down. She got out of bed, turned on the bathroom light, and became distraught when she saw it was a stranger who had committed the assault.

In testimony at his first trial, Hartman said he fell asleep in a chair then went in search of a bed after waking with a sore neck. He crawled onto the open side of a double air mattress with a sleeping couple.

Hartman said he woke up alone on the air mattress with an erection, his pants unzipped, and a woman accusing him of rape.

The woman, whose identity is protected by court order, said the incident changed her life. She wanted to be a parole officer before she was sexually assaulted, the woman said, but could not bear the idea of working with offenders after being victimized.

“How didn’t it change my life? It changed the way my personal relationships are,” she said, “my sexual relationships, my career path. It has affected my life in every single way.”