YOUNGSTOWN — Franklin C. Herns took the stand in his own defense Wednesday on the last day of testimony in his rape trial to deny that he forced a woman he knew to have sex with him at his mother’s house on Sunshine Avenue on the East Side on June 27, 2021.

The jury began deliberating at 3 p.m. but went home later and will resume deliberations today.

Earlier in the trial, the woman read Facebook Messenger messages she and Herns exchanged in the days and hours before the alleged rapes. She interpreted them as Herns repeatedly asking for sex and her telling him she did not want to have sex because she needed a stable relationship with a devoted man and father.

She said she and Herns had been sexually active several years earlier, but she had three growing children and could no longer engage in the conduct that happened in the past.

Herns, 29, who is on trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on two counts of rape, said he believes people who are of a different age from he and the woman would not understand what her terms, emojis and abbreviations meant.

During the woman’s testimony, Assistant Prosecutor Caitlyn Andrews repeatedly asked for translation from the woman as to what her messages, emojis and abbreviations meant.

During Herns’ testimony Wednesday, he said many people do not understand that the woman’s messages indicated her interest in having sex with him, not her disinterest.

“Isn’t it true that a lot of your messages are talking about sex,” asked Rob Andrews, assistant county prosecutor.

“Correct,” Herns replied.

Then Andrews asked if many of the woman’s messages indicated an unwillingness to have sex with him.

Herns said no.

“A person who doesn’t understand the way people of my age communicate may think she is not really speaking sexually even though she was speaking sexually in those messages,” Herns said.

“So you read those to be she was” (speaking sexually),” Andrews asked.

“No, she definitely was. She was speaking sexually, but it was basically having two conversations at once,” Herns said.

Andrews, whose age is older than the age group of Herns and the woman, apologized after repeatedly calling the Facebook Messenger messages “texts.”

Under questioning by one of his attorneys, Tom Zena, Herns said the day the woman alleged he raped her multiple times, they did have sex, but he never forced her.

He said they talked more than 90 minutes in his dining room before going to the bedroom. She sat on the bed right away, not in a chair, as she testified, Herns said. She was interested in having sex “the whole time,” Herns said. “She was never resisting of any sort.”

Earlier Wednesday, Heather Bayless, a family nurse practitioner who was working in the emergency department at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital the day the woman came in after the alleged rape, testified.

She said the woman had no physical injuries, but that is no different from the roughly 100 other alleged rape victims she has examined over the years. She said one reason is that the female body lubricates itself whether the sex is rape or consensual in order to protect itself and prevent damage such as bruising or lacerations.

“It’s the body’s process to produce these fluids to produce lubrication,” she said.

When Caitlyn Andrews, assistant county prosecutor, asked if Bayless remembered the woman, Bayless replied, “You have those patients that just sort of tug at your heart. I probably take care of 35 patients a day. I work over 200 hours a month alone in the emergency department, so I’ve seen thousands.

“But there are those specific patients who will leave an imprint on your heart. And it’s because I know it’s because the trauma they went through,” she said. Andrews asked Bayless whether she believed woman in this case was telling the truth.

“Yes,” Bayless said.