WESTFIELD – A man who refused to take no for an answer has been arraigned on charges which include indecent assault and battery on a person older than 14-years-old.
Westfield State University Officer Caitlin McCue reports, in a court document, that she was dispatched to a university residence hall last Friday for a possible sexual assault.
McCue spoke with a female student who told her that a male friend, Kristopher E. Howard, 18, of 22 Cheaspeake Road, Holbrook, had been trying to get other friends to leave.
Two witnesses told McCue that Howard had become angry when they would not leave the room and said “He had been forcing (the victim) to drink alcohol all night long.”
The victim said that she told the man repeatedly that they were not going to have sex but he was persistent and “ripped my belt of and then he put his hands up under my shirt” although she told him to stop.
“I told him at the beginning of the night we were not going to have sex,” the victim told the officer.
She also told the officer “I know him from home and we have hooked up before.”
Howard had left the residence hall before any officers arrived but he was found en route to the WSU south parking lot and arrested when he was found to be in possession of a water bottle containing vodka he said he had taken from a girl’s room.
He was subsequently charged with being a person younger than the legal drinking age in possession of liquor, providing alcohol to a person younger than the legal drinking age and indecent assault and battery on a person older than 14-years-of age.
He was arraigned Monday in Westfield District Court before Judge Philip A. Contant who set his bail at $2,500.
Howard was found to also be the defendant of a pending case in Quincy District Court where he is charged with three charges of breaking and entering a building in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony, two charges of malicious destruction of property valued more than $250 and larceny of property valued more than $250.
Assistant District Attorney Magali Montes filed a motion to revoke bail in that case but Contant deferred to the Quincy court and declined to intervene in that case.
Howard was scheduled to appear in Quincy on yesterday but did not appear and the case was continued until Jan. 13.
He was able to post the $2,500 bail and was released pending a Dec. 2 hearing.
He was enjoined for making any threats or violence toward the named victim.
