Man convicted of sexually assaulting Chapman student on campus
A man has been convicted of sexually assaulting a student on the campus of Chapman University in the city of Orange last year.
Following about two days of deliberations, jurors reached verdicts in the case of Dalante Jerome Bell, who is charged with assault with the intent to commit a sex offense and sexual penetration by a foreign object, both felonies. The verdicts were read Wednesday in an Orange County Superior courtroom in Santa Ana, convicting Bell of both counts for the Sept. 24, 2021, attack on the 18-year-old woman.
A sentencing date was not immediately set, with jurors sent back to deliberate on a sentence-enhancing allegation filed by prosecutors.
The student was having a FaceTime conversation with her boyfriend, who was a UC Berkeley student, in her dorm the evening of the attack when she walked outside on campus for privacy, O.C. Deputy District Attorney Austin Neiman told jurors in opening statements of Bell's trial.
She ended up in a courtyard outside Henley Hall on the university campus, Neiman said.
The woman spotted someone walking by who "creeped her out a little," the prosecutor said.
Moments later the man, dressed in a black hoodie and pants and wearing a mask that "looked like a skeleton," returned and stood at the top of the stairs in the courtyard "staring at her," Neiman said.
"The only way out is up those stairs," Neiman said.
Eventually, the man "punches her in the face, pushes her down," slamming her into a trash can, Neiman said. The attacker then sexually assaulted her by fondling her through her clothes, Neiman said.
He held her down for about 20 seconds as she shouted for help, and the suspect ran away when men ran to help the woman, Neiman said.
In an interview conducted a few days after the sexual assault, the victim described her experience to CBSLA.
"He punches me in the face, I hit the trash can behind me, like a concrete trash can, he's just like beating me up," she said. "I don't know if I hit him off, or like pushed him off, or I don't know if he heard people coming. Sometime he got off and I chased him back up the stairs, cursing him out. By the time I had got up there people had heard it."
A surveillance camera caught the "entire assault," Neiman said. The suspect eluded police when he slipped into residential neighborhoods, although police were able to track some of his movements through various business surveillance cameras.
On Sept. 27, police at a news conference released a surveillance video screenshot image of the suspect. Bell's father and stepmother recognized Bell, so they called authorities and arranged for him to come into the city's police station, Neiman said.
Police collected a genetic swab sample from the defendant and sent it to the Orange County Crime Lab, where investigators matched the genetic material to the skull cap and to the left breast and crotch areas of the woman's clothes, Neiman said.
"Which tells you we have the right person," Neiman said. "No hoax, no conspiracy. ... Just normal police work following bread crumbs."
Bell's attorney, Dermot Givens, countered that "rape, sexual assault, sexual battery" are "dirty, despicable...But so is being falsely accused."
According to Givens, Bell had tried to find a party on campus that night, and when he couldn't find it, he walked toward the District Lounge in Orange. Bell saw "some girls" and went down the steps of the courtyard outside Henley Hall, the attorney said.
"As he approached, she (the alleged victim) spits at him and calls him the N-word," Givens said.
Bell turned around and walked away as she "keeps shooting racial epithets" at him, Givens said.
"He decides to turn around and give her a piece of his mind, and she spat on him again," according to the attorney. At that point, she stumbled on a crack and fell, and so did Bell, but, "He's an athlete and he twists and turns to fall to her side," Givens said.
The alleged victim, who has had martial arts training, "kicks him eight times in 22 seconds," Givens said.
"He eventually breaks free and runs away," Givens said. "What does she do? She gets up and screams racial epithets at him. ... He's running for his life. That woman kicked his butt."
Givens said there was no "skeleton mask" as the victim reported. He also claimed the alleged victim changed her story several times.
Givens showed the jurors the surveillance video in slow motion so they could see every frame in an attempt to support his claim that "Jane Doe and her boyfriend created this story" of a sex assault.
Givens said Bell grew up in Orange County, graduating from Garden Grove High School. He was working as an Amazon delivery driver at the time of the alleged attack. He was not a Chapman student.
