LAGUNA NIGUEL : Ex-Colleague Says Officer Raped Her

A former San Clemente police officer testified Wednesday that she was raped by former officer David Wayne Bryan after both had worked on overnight patrol.

The woman became emotionally distraught several times on the witness stand in the second day of a preliminary Municipal Court hearing to determine whether Bryan will stand trial on felony and misdemeanor counts, including rape and assault and battery. He has pleaded not guilty.

The former policewoman testified that she had first withheld information about her alleged rape from the district attorney and had tried to remain friends with Bryan, 32, so as not to jeopardize her job on the police force, where she was a recruit on probation status.

She reported the incident to a district attorney’s investigator after she was fired by the Police Department.

“The reason for my not coming forward at first was because of my job,” she said. “After being let go, there no longer was a reason.”

Bryan’s public defender, Leonard Gumlia, said he is seeking to show that the former policewoman was telling the truth in her first interview with the district attorney’s investigator, when she said that any sexual involvement she had with Bryan had been with her consent.

According to the woman’s testimony, she and Bryan had become buddies in the department. When Bryan’s marriage was breaking up and he needed a place to live, she offered to let him rent a bedroom in an apartment that she and her fiance were sharing in Mission Viejo.

She said he followed her home one morning at the end of their work shift to see the place. Rather than return home, he decided to sleep over in the second bedroom downstairs, she said.

He asked to take a shower, she said, so she showed him the way to the bathroom next to her own bedroom before going to bed.

But after his shower, Bryan walked naked to the foot of her bed, pulled off the comforter and the sweat pants in which she was sleeping and raped her, despite her protests, she testified.

She said she decided not to file a complaint against him because she was not sure that she would be believed.

In the cross-examination, the woman acknowledged that she continued to be friendly with Bryan after the alleged incident and even called him to cheer him with news that another alleged rape victim who had filed suit against him was a suspect in a reported theft.

She said she believes that her firing from the Police Department may have been spurred in part by her request for advice when she learned that she might be subpoenaed as a witness to testify against Bryan.

Police Chief Albert C. Ehlow could not be reached for comment. Lt. Paul Falk, the superior to whom the former policewoman said she confided, declined to discuss how the department reacted.

Three women testified Tuesday that Bryan also abused them while he was in uniform. One of them told Municipal Judge Ronald P. Kreber that she was raped. The preliminary hearing is to continue today.