A 44-year-old Mississippi man accused of raping an intellectually disabled woman during a visit to Little Rock was cleared of wrongdoing Wednesday by a Pulaski County jury after testifying that she initiated their sexual encounter and questioned whether she was as handicapped as authorities claimed.
The eight men and four women deliberated about three hours to acquit Moez Arous to end the two-day trial before Circuit Judge Karen Whatley.
The verdict brought both Arous and his 27-year-old accuser, who is also partially blind with autism, to tears in their seats, about 15 feet apart. The jury's finding does not mean Arous' immediate release. He's still facing a charge of failure to appear, which carries up to 10 years in prison, after not showing up for his first trial setting in December 2021. He had been released on $100,000 bond in April 2021.
He was a fugitive for almost a year, until his arrest last November in Texas by U.S. Customs at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, coming back to the United States from Tunisia, court records show. He's scheduled to stand trial.
There was no question that Arous and his accuser had sex during a March 2020 encounter that began as a lunchtime pizza date after they had connected through the dating web site Plenty of Fish. They had planned to eat at a restaurant but ended up taking pizza to the hotel where Arous was living at the time. After about five hours at the hotel, Arous took the woman home because her father had called and told her to return.
Arous, who spent about 45 minutes on the witness stand Wednesday, told jurors the woman was lying about their sexual encounter, although he did not offer a motive for deception. He said they ate pizza, had consensual sex, watched TV and then had sex again before he took her home.
"I never ever ever raped anyone in my life," Arous said.
He told jurors that the woman initiated sex both times, the first time by taking off her shirt, the second time somewhat later by putting her hands on him as they lay in bed together "chilling."
He said she made him wear a condom the first time but the second was unprotected because he did not have any more. He told jurors the woman enjoyed their encounter and wanted to see him again but that he had decided without telling her that he was not interested because of how susceptible she was to her father's control.
Arous acknowledged he had lied about his age on the dating site, cutting 10 years off because he is attracted to younger women. He said he regularly used the dating site to "hook up," and had used it regularly for 10 years to meet women for sex.
Arous, also known as Motaz Arous, disputed the woman's assertion that her dating profile showed her to have autism or that she ever told him herself. He told jurors the woman did not present herself to him as she appeared on the witness stand the day before. He said he could tell that she had sex before but that she was obviously not very experienced.
"She's a completely different person ... the way she talks and everything," Arous said. "She knows exactly what's going on. She wasn't naive."
Defense attorney Joe Don Winningham told jurors the verdict should come down to whomever they believed. The accuser had no marks or injuries, despite her claims that Arous had pinned her down and roughly pulled her clothes off. Winningham, with co-counsel Camille Wright, said authorities failed to show proof that the woman was disabled as they had claimed.
"Don't listen to the lawyers. Listen to what the evidence is," the public defender said in closing arguments. "You basically have his word against her word. There's no physical evidence."
Further, Arous has been completely forthcoming, both submitting to a police interview and testifying for the jurors, when he had no legal obligation to do so, Winningham said.
By contrast, the woman had not been fully honest with police because she had not told investigators that she and Arous had sex twice, Winningham said. Her version of events doesn't account for all of the time she and Arous were together, he said. Jurors should also consider that he had brought the woman to what was essentially his home then returned her to her own residence, he said.
Arous was looking for young and naive victims he could control and manipulate when he contacted the woman through the dating site; his tactic of misrepresenting his age shows that, deputy prosecutor Justin Harper said, telling jurors Arous saw the woman as "prey."
"He knew she was an easy target," Harper said.
The woman "was looking for the love of her life" on a date site and Arous lured her out of her home with the promise of eating her favorite food at her favorite restaurant, Cicis Pizza, deputy prosecutor Hannah Johnston said.
Jurors had heard from her three times -- her 911 call, her interview with police and her testimony on Tuesday, and Johnston asked them to recall her tearful call to police the night of the incident.
"Does that sound like someone who had consensual sex?" the prosecutor said, telling them the fear and hurt in the woman's voice was obvious.
Arous' accuser spent about 30 minutes testifying, her time on the stand drawn out as a result of her propensity to cry when asked to recall details about what had gone on between them. She told jurors she'd been on the dating site to find someone to marry, saying she was lonely living at home with her father. She said she'd been on two dates before meeting Arous. The woman has since married.
He picked her up to go to Cicis but then told her they would pick up pizza from Domino's, she said. She said they took the pizza to his two-bed hotel room, telling jurors he intently watched her eat hers as they sat on separate beds. He flipped through the TV channels before tuning into NCIS New Orleans, which she said was a disappointment because he had bypassed her favorite cartoon, Spongebob Squarepants.
Arous asked her so often whether she was finished eating that she stopped before she was full, the woman said. He abruptly took the food away then pushed her back on the bed, telling jurors he was pulling at her pants as she tried to keep them on by holding onto the belt loops.
Arous overpowered her, took off his own pants and got on top of her, she said.
"I told him no. I didn't like it," she said. "It hurt really bad. I didn't want it. He forced it on me."
In her interview with police two days after going to police, the woman indicated she had never seen male genitalia before.
"He takes off his boxers and I see something I don't wanna see," the woman told detective Sylwia Carrig, describing it as a "hot dog." "I saw something I never saw before in my whole life. I don't know what it is. Someone told me ... if I ever date ... there was a little bit different between men and women. I saw this weird thing on a man. It looked so yucky."