DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. – Chilling details are emerging after a victim of the alleged serial rapist talked about her horrifying attack. But what she said happened right after attack left the entire courtroom stunned.
The woman said right after the attack, Ikeie Smith, the man on trial, spent close to an hour talking to her about religion.
The victim testified that she was raped years before, and that the night Smith is accused of coming into her house, she was determined to protect herself and her sleeping child. But she didn't throw punches. Instead, she used the power of prayer.
Smith is accused of raping 34 different women over several years. The case heard Wednesday inside the Dearborn Heights court came from December 2013.
READ: Women offer dramatic testimony against accused serial rapist
"My bedroom door opened, and I rolled over in bed," the victim said. "I saw a flashlight."
She told the court that Smith jumped in her bed as her 3-year-old slept in the next room.
"He said, 'I'll hurt you, I'll hurt her,'" the victim said. "He held a knife to my neck."
She said she believed his threat and told her attacker that she had previously been raped.
"I was trying to have him see me as a person and have sympathy for me," she said.
Smith allegedly backed off briefly.
"He said, 'I still have a desire. I still want to do this. I want you to feel my excitement,'" she said. "And he made me touch him."
She told the court she started praying out loud, not for herself, but for the man in her room.
"He got off the bed and walked around in circles, saying, 'Why did I pick this house? Why did I pick this house?' And I said to him, 'Maybe it's because (God) wanted you to hear a message," the victim said.
She said she bargained with the intruder for more than 45 minutes.
"He said the devil entered him and was causing him to do these things," she said.
The man opened up about his childhood and how his mother was a drug addict.
"As a result of that, he ended up in foster case," the victim recounted. "While in foster care, he was sexually abused by a relative, and he blamed his mother."
Smith allegedly left without further assaulting the woman.
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