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Ex-student takes stand, details alleged rape at BU Boston Herald, Thursday, January 11, 2001 By David Weber A former Boston University student took the witness stand yesterday and recounted how a 33-year-old man allegedly pulled her into a shower stall in her Fenway dormitory and raped her after threatening her with a knife. The woman, now 19, testified in Suffolk Superior court that Abdelmajid Akouk of the South End reached out from behind a shower curtain, grabbed her wrist and yanked her into the stall on September 12, 1999. She said he raped here there until he became unnerved when another student walked into the second-floor common restroom at Loretto Hall, which BU had rented from Emmanuel College. "He said, "Don't scream because I'll stab you. I'll stab anyone," the woman testified. She said Akouk forced her at knifepoint to take him to her room across the hall. There he turned on the overhead light and raped her again on the floor while her roommate slept, she testified. Asked if she woke her roommate up, she said, "No, I did not. I was afraid if she did wake up, he'd kill us both." She said she did not scream either. "I was crying, I was saying, "'No, no,'" she testified, maintaining a calm demeanor throughout her three hours on the witness stand. When Akouk finished the act about 20 minutes after grabbing her in the restroom, she testified, "He stood up and asked me how to get out of the dorm. He said he was sorry and asked me how to get out of the dorm." Police allege Akouk broke into the building shortly before 4:30 a.m. through a basement window. Akouk, who lived on Clarendon Street and worked for the Gentle Giant Moving Co., is now in the third day of his trial on charges of rape, home invasion, kidnapping and assault with a dangerous weapon. He also is charged with indecent assault and battery on another college student whom he alleged groped two hours before the alleged rape. Akouk's defense attorney, Mary Ames, told the jurors in her opening the sex between Akouk and the BU student was consensual. --Reprinted with permission of the Boston Herald.