Kristin Smart trial: 2nd woman says Paul Flores raped her — ‘I was saying no and screaming’
This story contains descriptions of sexual assault and may be troubling for some readers.
On a quiet night at a San Pedro bar 11 years ago, one woman said she lost memories after meeting Paul Flores, only recalling “flashes” throughout the years of a sexual assault that she says stays with her.
She’s the second women to testify in the Kristin Smart murder trial that Flores was her rapist.
Flores is accused of murdering Smart in the commission of a rape after a 1996 off-campus Cal Poly party and hiding her body with the help of his father, Ruben Flores, who is also on trial.
The woman, who the court identified as Sarah Doe, described a similar experience as Rhonda Doe, who testified Flores raped her in 2008 near Redondo Beach.
Both woman say they met Flores at a bar, exchanged small talk, then ended up at his house. Once there, they said, he gave them a drink.
And that’s when the night got blurry.
Woman told Paul Flores ‘no means no’ after assault, she testifies
Sarah Doe testified Friday she went to the San Pedro bar with a friend in spring 2011. It was a weeknight, and there were maybe six other people there, one of them being Paul Flores, she said.
Doe said she and her friend went out for a smoke break, leaving their drinks at the bar. When they came back, Flores was sitting closer to them. The night got fuzzier, and on another smoke break she noticed Flores had followed her and her friend outside.
They chatted and Flores bought them drinks, she said. In total, Doe remembers having four to five drinks, a number that had not made her black out before or after that night.
Sometime after that, she said, she remembers is a fight breaking out at the bar and her, her friend, her friend’s friend and Flores getting in her car. She doesn’t know how her friend or her friend’s friend got home.
After that, she remembers parking outside Flores’ house on Upland Way — an address confirmed by San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office investigator James “J.T.” Camp. Inside the home, she remembers clutter everywhere, “almost like hoarding.”
While she was standing in the living room, she said Flores left to the kitchen to get her a drink. He came back, gave it to her and she drank it.
The next thing she remembers is Flores on top of her engaging in intercourse, she said, wiping tears with a tissue.
She said she was confused and did not consent to Flores’ sexual advances.
“I just felt really out of it. I wasn’t really processing what was going on,” she said.
She remembers asking to go to the shower to wash off, and there she said Flores raped her again.
At some point in the night, Flores attempted to force a gag into her mouth, she said.
“I was saying no and screaming but he kept trying to shush me and put it in my mouth,” she said. “He just kept shoving it in my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. He kept trying to force it in my mouth.”
Eventually Flores gave up and stopped trying to gag her, Doe testified.
She woke up with the sunlight and immediately began to get dressed to leave silently, she said. Flores woke up too, and followed her to the front door.
At that time, the only memory she had was Flores trying to force the ball gag in her mouth.
“When someone tells you no, no means no,” she said she told Flores before leaving. “And I think he knew what I was talking about.”
She said Flores look down at the ground and responded “OK.”
Doe said she had bruises on her arms, shoulders and thighs from Flores pinning her down. He texted her a couple days after, and she doesn’t remember what exactly she said, but said, “I might’ve said, ‘Leave me alone.’”
Multiple jurors became emotional during Doe’s description of her alleged rape, some asking for tissues to wipe their tears.
She saw him once more a couple years later at the same bar she met him originally, she said, and immediately left when she saw him. He also once stopped by her work, she said.
Los Angeles police officers reached out to her in 2020 and asked her about the alleged assault. It is unclear how LAPD found her to question.
Doe spoke with San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office Det. Clint Cole in June 2021, when she identified Flores in a photo lineup, according to evidence shown in court.
She said she didn’t report it to law enforcement at the time because she was confused herself about the details of the alleged assault. She tried to report it a couple years after, but “they kept asking me questions I didn’t know, and I kinda just gave up,” she said.
Defense tries not to be ‘disrespectful,’ asks Doe about social media posts with alcohol
On cross examination, Flores’ defense attorney Robert Sanger pointed out that Doe had drunken alcohol and posted about it on Facebook between 2011 and 2012 — when she was 21 and 22 years old.
“A lot of people my age did that,” Doe told Sanger.
“I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but a big part of your life was going out and getting drunk, correct?” Sanger asked.
“Not my whole life,” she said.
“It’s what you posted about,” Sanger said.
“To my friends, yeah,” she responded.
Some jurors shook their heads during this line of questioning.
Sanger then asked if she had spoken to LAPD after seeing on social media that Flores was a person of interest in the case, which she said she did. She said she didn’t know Flores’ full name until after she saw news articles about him.
She said some friends had told her about the “Your Own Backyard” podcast, which explored Smart’s disappearance, but she had not listened to it herself.
Doe tried to avoid outside information and talking with others about Flores and the Smart case to the best of her ability, she said.
Doe was then excused, and witness testimony will resume Wednesday.
A media coalition hearing regarding unsealing documents and modifying the gag order in the case was set begin at 1:30 p.m.
This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Kristin Smart trial: 2nd woman says Paul Flores raped her — ‘I was saying no and screaming’."
