Staff photos / Ed Runyan ... Sergio Gonzalez III, right, watches testimony in his rape trial Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. At left is his attorney, Aaron Meikle.

YOUNGSTOWN — The young woman accusing Sergio F. Gonzalez III of raping her multiple times in late 2017 and early 2018 when she was 11, took the stand Tuesday on the first day of Gonzalez’s rape trial and described the details of the two rapes for which Gonzalez is charged.

She also explained the situations that put her in contact with Gonzalez around that time when he was 17 and detailed the reasons she waited two years — when she was 13 — to disclose the rapes to a counselor at her school in the city school district.

She testified for more than an hour under questioning by Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Day and Aaron Meikle, Gonzalez’s defense attorney. The two school counselors she disclosed the rapes to also testified.

The trial resumes today.

Gonzalez, 23, is charged with two counts of rape that each carry a life prison sentence if he is convicted. The charges allege that he forced the girl to engage in sexual conduct — at least one time giving her marijuana beforehand and at least one time threatening to tell on her for smoking marijuana if she told anyone about the sexual encounters.

She testified to engaging in sexual conduct with Gonzalez at least five times at two homes in the city, but most of the testimony related to the two times in Gonzalez’s indictment.

Day told the jury in the courtroom of Judge John Durkin that the two offenses in Gonzalez’s indictment took place late Dec. 31, 2017, or early Jan. 1, 2018, and again sometime in the first several months of 2018.

The young woman said she was 11, and it was after midnight New Year’s Eve or early New Year’s Day. She was sleeping in the bedroom of a home where she visited at times when Gonzalez walked into her room, causing her to wake up. She knew him, and nothing had ever happened between them before, she said.

He said he wanted to show her something in another room. She went there and he asked her if she wanted to smoke marijuana.

She knew what it was but wasn’t sure what effect it would have. He blew the smoke into her face, and then he asked her to play a party game, she testified.

Eventually he asked her to sit on his lap. “He was just very persistent on me getting closer to him,” she said. He asked for sex, and she said no. “He kept persisting,” she said. That is when he “made me” engage in a sex act, she said. There were two other children asleep in the room at the time, she said.

When she visited the home a second time several months later and used the restroom upstairs, Gonzalez asked her to come into his room, which she did. He asked her for sex again, she said she didn’t want to again. “He said he would tell people how I smoked and that this would be the last time,” she said.

“I said ‘I don’t want to do it. You have a girlfriend, why don’t you ask her?'” she testified. That is when the second encounter happened, she said.

Two years later, she was having a counseling session with Tamara LeFlore, a Red Zone counselor in Youngstown City Schools, with whom she had been talking for several weeks. She told her about the episodes involving Gonzalez, she said.

“She was sharing things about her past, and I was sharing things about mine, and I just felt really comfortable that day, and I was worried for someone else,” she said. “I felt like it was time to finally say something.”

She said she didn’t say anything sooner because “I felt ashamed.”

Meikle cross-examined the girl for more than half an hour, asking her to relate the details of the two alleged rapes again, this time asking multiple times if she had explained it differently in another courtroom earlier in the case. For instance, Meikle asked her to specify the point at which she first saw the marijuana and how it was packaged. He later asked her to specify the specific part of the room where they were when various parts of the encounter happened.

She said she was not sure what type of pants Gonzalez was wearing, but they had an elastic waistband. Meikle asked if the young woman told LeFlore the name of the game they were playing when the sex happened the first time. “At the time, I don’t think I mentioned it to her when I first disclosed,” she said.

“Did you tell anybody?” Meikle asked.

“I told it to you guys,” she said of attorneys.

“So today is the first time you are telling us about it,” Meikle asked.

“And I told Kevin,” she said of Day.

She said Gonzalez did not threaten her the first time. He threatened her the second time, she said. She went upstairs to use the bathroom, and it was still daylight.

“I could still see the sun shining through the window,” she said.

When Meikle asked her whether she remembers telling an employee of the Children’s Advocacy Center at Akron Children’s Hospital that Gonzalez threatened her the first time it happened, she said, “I don’t remember.”

LeFlore was the first witness of the trial, testifying that she first started working with the girl who disclosed the rapes several weeks before the disclosure because the girl was showing signs of being anti-social and was “real quiet.”

But during one of their sessions, the girl “out of the blue” asked LeFlore if she could eat lunch with LeFlore and then “poured out” the information about the alleged rapes. At that point, protocol dictates contacting other school officials and the girl’s mother. It led to other officials from Children Services being contacted, and the girl telling her mother about the allegations.

The girl cried much of the time and was embarrassed to talk about it, especially with her mother, who was supportive, LeFlore said.

In opening statements to the jury, Day said the investigation into the girl’s allegations showed that Gonzalez told an investigator the girl “asked me” for sex, “but I said no.” Day said by the end of the trial, it will be clear “how ridiculous that assertion is.”

Day said most of the evidence will come from witnesses. Because the girl disclosed the rapes two years later, there is no physical evidence.

In opening statements, Meikle said there also won’t be any digital evidence — no cellphone conversations or people who will testify that the alleged victim told anyone about the allegations.

He also told jurors it will be important for jurors to listen to the details — “dates, times, time lines, people, places, things.” He added, “The story does not line up. The facts do not make sense.”

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