Rodriguez jury resumes deliberations

The jury in the trial of Veronika Rodriguez was unable to reach a verdict Thursday, May 22, and will get back to work Friday morning.

Jurors started to deliberate on Thursday around 3:30 p.m. Judge Charles Jones sent them home at 8:40 p.m. after they had failed to reach a verdict.

The 27-year-old Pennsylvania Air National Guard recruit is accused of falsely reporting that she was raped at Fort Indiantown Gap by a fellow guard member, Major Fahad Pervez, on Jan. 8, 2023, and secretly audio and video recording 55 minutes of their time together that evening, without Pervez’ knowledge or consent. Pervez is a New York medical doctor. 

Investigating officers at FTIG initially believed Rodriguez’s report, but once they examined the contents of her cellphone, the recording and dozens of text messages found on it led them to conclude that Pervez and Rodriguez had consensual sex, according to their testimony during this week’s trial. As a result, they charged Rodriguez, not Pervez.

Rodriguez’s testimony took up most of Thursday’s session. She began by telling the jury that she was not an experienced alcohol drinker, and often relied on friends since college to order drinks for her. “I’m still not sure what to order,” she said. She said that she’d been drunk on occasion before the night in question. Her testimony related to her claim that Pervez got her drunk at the Frog’s Hollow Tavern about an hour before they had sex.    

She then described her duties at the Middletown Guard dental clinic where she was working, and recalled meeting Pervez for the first time on Jan. 7, 2023, when he came in for a dental exam. They chatted for five to ten minutes as she took his vitals and completed paperwork, she said.

The conversation turned to what she did outside work, what his duties were, and to books, movies, and restaurants. When he asked for her phone number, she declined, according to her testimony. He left his name and number on a post-it note. 

After a text message exchange, they agreed to meet for dinner the next evening, Jan. 8, 2023, at Snitz Creek Brewery near Fort Indiantown Gap. Rodriguez said she agreed to Snitz because she’d been there before.

They arrived separately at Snitz that evening, but discovered it was closed. Rodriguez testified that she suggested they put off their date until the next drill date, but Pervez insisted they go somewhere else.

She testified that after some Googling, they drove in Pervez’s Jeep, at his insistence, to the Frog’s Hollow Tavern on State Route 72 between Lebanon and Jonestown. She left her car at Snitz Creek. 

Rodriguez at first testified that she’d never been to Frog’s Hollow before, but later on cross examination said she’d forgotten that she’d been there once previously.

“I was hesitant to go to Frog’s,” she told the jury. “I kept thinking to ask if we could do a raincheck, but he kept pushing back.”

When they arrived at Frog’s Hollow, it too appeared to be dark. Rodriguez said she was nervous about going in, so she pretended to call the tavern using a fake number, and told Pervez there was no answer. Pervez tried the door and found it was open, so they went inside and sat at the bar.

Once inside, she asked Pervez to recommend a drink, and he ordered her a Long Island iced tea. Responding to her defense attorney Ian Ehrgood’s question, she said she had “over two but under four” of the cocktails in the “hour or two” they were having dinner at Frog’s Hollow.

They ordered food and Rodriguez said she was sipping her drink slowly “so I wouldn’t have to respond to him.” This annoyed Pervez, she said, and he told her “to keep up with him.” 

Pervez steered the conversation from casual chit-chat to what Rodriguez described as “weirdly intimate.”

“He asked me if I’d had sex before. I told him ‘I’m practicing celibacy, I’m religious,’” she testified Wednesday. “He said religion was dumb.”

Pervez continued to ask about masturbation, her past relationships, and her other sex practices and preferences. 

“I became uncomfortable. I played on my phone to divert, and he became upset and asked who could see my location.” This upset Pervez, she testified. “He said he gets upset when women ignore him.” 

At that point, “he removed my phone, it was unlocked.” When he started going through her phone’s apps, “I climbed over, he wouldn’t let me take it back.” Rodriguez said she managed to lock her phone, and Pervez tried to unlock it “with my face.” Finally, “I grabbed for my phone and got it.”

Rodriguez at some point went into the Frog’s Hollow restroom because “I realized I didn’t feel well.” When she came out, Pervez told her that he’d closed the tab and “we need to go.”

While they were inside Frog’s Hollow, Rodriguez said she started secretly recording Pervez on her phone. “I started in Frog’s because he was getting more aggressive in his body language and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.”

It was at that point, she said, that “I realized that I had put myself in a vulnerable position.”

They left Frog’s Hollow in Pervez’ Jeep, and she kept recording. 

Rodriguez said she saw her apartment number on Pervez’s phone’s screen, and asked him how he’d gotten it. At that point, she told the jury, he took her glasses from her. Rodriguez testified that she has poor vision without glasses, and can only see shapes and shades.

They drove back to Snitz Creek Brewery in Pervez’s Jeep. Rodriguez said that along the way he asked her about her sexual history and said he has a fetish for Spanish women. She also said he seemed to be making unnecessary turns and at one point made a U-turn.

When they got back to Snitz, Rodriguez said she told Pervez “it’s been a good night, I’m going home, give me my glasses.” He refused and said she shouldn’t drive because she’d get a DUI. At that point, she realized that the Jeep’s doors were locked from the inside. Pervez said he wanted to hang out more.

Rodriguez said when they were in the Snitz parking lot, Pervez started “touching my hair and tried to kiss me. I said, ‘Don’t, are you trying to kiss me?’”

“He tried again,” she said. “We continued to make out, and my nose started bleeding.”

Rodriguez testified that Pervez kept trying to grab her shoulders and chest and said he wanted to check her thyroid.

“I told him I was sick, but he didn’t stop touching me,” said Rodriguez. “I started randomly talking about a friend. I was trying to delay.”

At that point, Pervez suggested that they go to the nearby Funck’s gas station to buy Afrin nasal spray for the bleeding. When they got there, “I went to the bathroom. I said I’ll grab the nasal spray. He said he’d park the car and wait.”

Gas station surveillance video played at trial shows Rodriguez entering alone, holding her phone, and without glasses. Pervez is seen walking in a little later. Eventually they pull something from a shelf, pay for it, and walk out.

In the gas station bathroom, Rodriguez testified that she drank water from the faucet and put her hands and fingerprints on the mirror “to leave some kind of evidence.” She explained that she’d seen this done on crime shows.

After they left the gas station, “I said I wanted to go to my car to get a sweater,” Rodriguez testified. Pervez said “no,” instead giving her his jacket.

Back in the Jeep, she said she kept spraying her nose to avoid having to kiss Pervez.

“I asked to go home or if he could take me home,” and “are we going to stay here all night?” she testified.

Instead, Pervez drove them to “a dark wooded area.” Other witnesses identified the location as the Keystone Conference Center, which sits on a hill apart from the rest of FTIG. Rodriguez said she wasn’t familiar with FTIG, having only been there twice, and that she couldn’t read street signs without her glasses.

The conference center was closed, and Pervez parked the Jeep in the lot, facing out, so they had a view of the base below. Rodriguez continued to secretly record what was going on in the Jeep.

At this point in her testimony, Ehrgood asked Rodriguez to describe what happened next.

Fighting tears from the witness stand, she said Pervez, in the driver’s seat, told her to “climb over and sit on top of me.” She told him the center console was in the way. She testified that Pervez then “tried to put his hands in my pants, I kept pulling away and pushing his shoulder.” Rodriguez said she pushed herself against the passenger door and closed her thighs tightly, trying to signal through her body language that she was unwilling.

According to Rodriguez’s testimony, Pervez then got out of the Jeep on the driver’s side, opened the rear door, and “started shuffling stuff around inside.”

“He had taken my phone from my car seat,” but it kept recording, Rodriguez testified.

Pervez then sat in the back seat and said “there’s more room, come back here. He asked me to climb back, but I said I was fat.”

Ultimately, Rodriguez testified, she climbed into the back seat. “He was just persistent. I couldn’t think of an excuse not to,” she said Wednesday.

Her phone continued to record.

In the back, Rodriguez said she kept looking for excuses to stop Pervez’s advances. 

“I said this was ghetto,” Rodriguez testified. “I tried to offer my apartment or a hotel as an out. That was not my real intent.”

But Pervez persisted, Rodriguez told the jury.

“He started making out with me again. He was in the passenger rear, I was in the driver rear. It progressed to my back being flat on the seat, he was on top.”

Rodriguez went on, starting to cry. “He tried to pull my shirt upwards, I pulled it down at least twice. I think I said a bed would be more comfortable. I was just trying to get out of the car.”

Then, Rodriguez testified, “he removed my bra. He asked me to come over and sit on top of him.”

Sobbing from the stand, she went on: “I did. I honestly kind of gave up at that point.”

“He took off my clothes and pulled his jeans down,” said Rodriguez. “I didn’t assist with either.”

Pervez started biting her chest and shoulders while she was completely naked, she testified. “He tried to insert himself into me. I pushed against, he pulled me close. I said ‘no’ twice, he inserted himself into me.”

Still crying, Rodriguez added that she told him she wasn’t on birth control, but that didn’t stop him. “I didn’t participate when he was inside me,” she said.

The sex ended when Pervez got a leg cramp, she said. “I moved to the other side of the back seat.”  

Prosecutors relied heavily on the texts and video from Rodriguez’s phone. They argued that, taken as a whole, they showed that Rodriguez lied about a consensual encounter.  Rodriguez’s motive, they contended, was to avoid being disciplined or discharged from the guard because she “fraternized” with a senior officer and that she wanted evidence of the sexual encounter in case, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Amy Muller, Pervez’s estranged wife “called her out.”

Prosecution witnesses also contended that Rodriguez altered her 55-minute audio and video recording to make it more favorable to her story.

Muller argued that texts sent by Rodriguez after she and Pervez had sex, along with the 55-minute video, showed that she consented, enjoyed it, bragged about it, and talked about having more sex with Pervez. 

Muller pointed out on cross-examination and in her closing statement to the jury that Rodriguez gave different facts in her two police interviews and on the witness stand.

Defense attorney Ian Ehrgood argued that the investigation by FTIG police was shoddy. Among other failures, he maintained that no attempt was made to obtain Frog’s Hollow surveillance video, no “pretext call” was made to Pervez to see if he could be trapped into an admission, and no polygraph tests were administered to anyone.

Ehrgood also presented psychologist Dr. Sheri Vanino, who has spent her career treating sex assault survivors. She told the jury that rape victims often react in “counterintuitive” ways during and after their assault, including denying that they’ve been raped, blaming themselves, and continuing to associate with their rapist. Almost all victims blame themselves to some extent, she testified, and 75% continue to associate with their assailant.

According to Vanino, reasons for counterintuitive victim behavior can include fear of humiliation, fear of one’s attacker, and a desire to get control back by denying the rape happened. “Often, it’s easier to pretend that it didn’t happen,” she told the jury.

In his closing argument, Ehrgood contended that Rodriguez’s actions, in her texts and on the 55 minutes of audio and video, matched many of the counterintuitive victim behaviors Vanino described, even though on their surface they could suggest consent.

Jury deliberations will resume 8:30 a.m. Friday, May 23.