Accuser testifies in sexual assault against former Regent Square restaurateur

The woman was vehement in her answers.

Did she ever give the alleged attacker her home address?

“Never.”

Did she give him her phone number?

“Absolutely not.”

Did she invite him to her home on Pittsburgh’s South Side to have sex?

“Absolutely not.”

“I never, ever invited that man to my residence,” she testified Wednesday. “I am disgusted at the thought.”

The 28-year old woman spent more than three hours on the witness stand, testifying on the second day of trial in the case against former restaurateur Adnan Pehlivan, 50. The Tribune-Review does not name victims of sexual assault.

Pehlivan is accused of following the woman and her two friends home during the early-morning hours of May 15, 2018, breaking into her house on the South Side and sexually assaulting her. At the time of charges, he was the owner of the former Regent Square restaurant Istanbul Sofra.

The woman testified that she woke up with Pehlivan performing oral sex on her. She said she immediately started yelling at him, and he tried to flee.

The two scuffled, the woman testified, and she tore off a piece of his T-shirt, which she later turned over to police.

During an initial trial on the charges in early 2019, Pehlivan was acquitted of stalking and simple assault. The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on charges involving sexual assault and burglary.

The retrial began Tuesday before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani.

During her testimony, the woman told the jury that Pehlivan sat next to her and her friend at Kopy’s bar earlier that night and bought them shots of Fireball.

Although the group laughed with Pehlivan and was entertained by him, the woman said he seemed strange and out of place — much older than others at the bar, dressed formally in a suit and performing magic tricks for them.

Defense attorney Anne Marie Mancuso asked repeatedly during cross-examination if the woman made plans to meet at her house during a few minutes of time when she sat next to Pehlivan alone.

“You never invited him to come back to your home?” Mancuso asked.

“Absolutely not,” the witness answered.

The defense attorney then played a few minutes of surveillance video from inside Kopy’s bar during which Pehlivan showed the woman, who had consumed approximately 10 drinks that night, something on his cell phone.

“Isn’t it then he was looking up his address and showed you a picture of his house?” Mancuso asked.

“Never,” the woman replied. “I never knew where he lived. I never discussed that with him.”

Mancuso repeatedly asked the witness why she didn’t tell police immediately that the man she found touching her that night was the same one she’d seen in the bar earlier that evening.

“I recognized him. I said it looked like the guy at the bar,” the woman testified. “I was in a state of shock, on the way to Magee Hospital for a rape kit.”

Mancuso asked several questions about the woman’s response to the alleged assault — not only to get the man off of her, but to chase him and try to hold him in her apartment to get arrested.

“He wanted to leave, and you tried to keep him there?” Mancuso asked.

“Correct. I was trying to have something to prove what had just happened to me. I was not going to allow this man to run out of my house and not be held accountable for what he had just done,” she said. “In that moment, it was instinct. It was react. I knew something terrible had just happened to me.”