The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

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November 20, 2008

Attacker ‘was just crazy,’ woman testifies

By Courtney Anderson

SHARON — Something “snapped” in the man a Sharon woman said sexually assaulted her Nov. 15 in her home, she said Thursday.

With bruises under her eyes, along her jaw and a cut above her right eye, the 55-year-old woman testified at a preliminary hearing for Donald M. Van Tassel, 22, of 2190 Homewood Drive, Hermitage.

The woman said she has known Van Tassel since he was a baby.

“There’s something mentally wrong with this child … He needs help, because something upstairs is not in the right room,” the woman said.

Van Tassel is charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated assault, aggravated indecent assault, unlawful restraint, making terroristic threats and reckless endangerment for allegedly assaulting the woman in her apartment.

Those charges were held to court by Senior District Judge Henry Russo, Sharon.

Van Tassel arrived at the woman’s home around midnight looking for a place to sleep or a ride home, she said. The woman said she thought he was intoxicated because he “acted goofy when he came to the door.”

He fell asleep in a chair while she made some phone calls to his relatives because she said he had a curfew.

“Next thing I know, he jumps up and he was at me,” she said.

She said he pulled off her pajama bottoms and carried her to the bedroom, where he performed sex acts on her and repeatedly punched her in the face.

“He wasn’t himself. He was just crazy,” she said of that night.

During the ordeal, which police said lasted three hours, the woman said she cried and “screamed and screamed and screamed.”

“Every time I’d open my mouth, he’d punch me and tell me to shut up,” he said. “He said if I made another move, he’d kill me.”

The woman said she tried to fight.

“As fast as I kicked him back he came back at me and he’d hit me harder,” she said.

The assault stopped after the woman started bleeding from a cut to her forehead and Van Tassel tried to attend to the wound. He said “we’ll fix this” by saying that three people “jumped” her, the woman testified.

Then Van Tassel laid down on the couch and went to sleep and she ran out of the house.

“I was just so grateful when he passed out,” she said.

She said she ran several blocks to a family member’s house barefoot and without her glasses. Someone there called 911.

Police found Van Tassel sleeping at her home and arrested him without incident, police said.

He is being held at Mercer County Jail on $50,000 bond and a parole detainer.

The woman was treated at the hospital of Sharon Regional Health System for a broken nose and eye socket, a concussion and bruises. She said her eyes were swollen shut and she had to get four stitches above her right eye.

The Herald does not identify victims of sexual assault.

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