In continued testimony Tuesday, Knicks guard Derrick Rose described the sexual encounter at the center of his civil rape trial as completely consensual. He also explained why he took his used condom with him afterward—he said he was taught to do that at the NBA’s rookie transition program.
As for why he wasn’t very responsive in his text messages to his accuser the next day, Rose said it was because “I thought she was going to claim rape.”
Rose and two friends are accused in a civil lawsuit of gang-raping Jane Doe inside her apartment in 2013. Doe has said she was too drunk to consent and doesn’t remember much. Rose had maintained that the sex was consensual, in part because all their prior sex was.
Rose testified that he is “very careful” with his condoms, and that there was no way he was going to leave it behind in this instance. When asked why by Jane Doe’s lawyer, Waukeen McCoy, Rose explained that he was taught to do so at his rookie program in Orlando, which includes classes on finances and sex.
Our request for comment was not immediately returned by the NBA.
Rose did not explicitly say why players were taught to take their condoms, but the commonly given explanation is that it prevents women from using athletes’ semen to impregnate themselves.
Rose went on to explain that either taking or flushing your condom was “normal in my profession.”
“You never know what women are up to nowadays,” Rose said.
On the night of the alleged rape, Rose said he, Ryan Allen, and Randall Hampton first partied with Doe and a friend at a house in Beverly Hills. That’s where, Rose said, he saw her have sex with one friend and where she gave Rose a blow job. She brought a friend, but Rose said he didn’t want to have sex with her. They later went over to the woman’s apartment, where he says she let them in. He could tell she was sober, Rose said, and she said “one at a time.” Allen went in first while Rose and Hampton waited in the living room.
When asked to explain how he knew he had consent, Rose referred back to past text messages saying she was horny and telling him to come over. This was just how their relationship worked, Rose said.
Later in his testimony, Rose put it this way: “If someone says come in one at a time and you are a guy, then what is that?”
Rose said she did not tell explicitly tell him to come inside, but that he just went in after Hampton. He said he saw her in a shirt, playing with a pink vibrator.
She told him to shut the door and pulled him in, Rose said. He testified they kissed, she played with his penis, and they had sex. He said “she seemed to like it.” He said she never said no, tried to roll off the bed, or tried to push him away. Afterward, “she looked peaceful to me.”
He said he couldn’t say if Allen had sex with her multiple times because “I wasn’t paying attention to them like that.” Under questions from the woman’s lawyers, he said it could be seen as a “typical night in L.A.”
Afterward, Rose said, he put the condom in his pocket casually, so as not to disrespect her.
When Doe later texted him about how he owed her money and how her hands were burned, Rose said he suspected something. (Doe has said she was under the influence and picked up hot stones around a fire pit on the patio, burning her hands.) He testified, “I thought she was going to claim rape.” He later added, “It looked like a setup.”
Rose said he knew “something was up” because if she had burned her hands on the stones, then someone would have had to call the paramedics. He also said someone at the house would have told him if that happened, so “it was suspicious” and said he thought she was lying about the burns.
He added: “It turned out to be what I thought.”
Rose later asked, when asked about his lack of communication with the woman the next day, “what was the point of me talking about it, if she had a good night?”
The most animated Rose got during the first part of the day’s testimony was when Doe’s lawyer made a quip about the manners his mother gave him. Rose shot back: “Don’t play with my mom like that.”