Skip to main content
On the fourth day of a highly-charged sexual assault trial, prosecutors from the Multnomah County District Attorney's office called a series of witnesses who provided support for Erica Naito-Campbell's allegation that Charles McGee and Aubre Dickson sexually assaulted her on May 10, 2012.
The state called Nichole Tennyson, a law school classmate of Naito Campbell's; Kevin Kaufman, a commercial real estate broker who attended the leadership program where Naito-Campbell met her alleged assailants; and Danielle Winterhalter, a San Francisco-based political consultant who offered Naito-Campbell public relations advice in advance of a Feb. 7, 2018 WW story that publicly detailed for first time the story of the alleged assault.
The most dramatic witness, however, was Wesley Campbell, 30, Naito-Campbell's half-brother, who grew up with her and described an "incredibly strong" relationship with her.
Wesley Campbell testified that sometime around Mother's Day in 2012 (which fell on May 13) at the Naito family home, Naito-Campbell told him what happened on the night of May 10.
"She broke down and said 'I have to tell you something,'" Campbell testified. "She collapsed and started bawling. I stood up and she fell into my arms."
Campbell told the court his half-sister spoke generally about what she said happened in McGee's home that night after she met McGee and Dickson for drinks downtown.
"'They held me down and I didn't want it and I couldn't stop it,'" Campbell testified his half-sister told him.
She told him she knew the men, Campbell testified, and she mentioned one of their names: Aubre Dickson. "'I trusted him,'" he recalls Naito-Campbell saying.
Wesley Campbell testified that the revelation was hard for him to process.
"I began to get incredibly angry," he testified. "I realized I just needed to leave town [he lived in Corvallis]. I called my girlfriend at the time and her mom, who forced me to pull over and calm down."
Campbell's girlfriend at the time of the alleged incident, Danielle Winterhalter, spent much of the afternoon on the stand.
Winterhalter, who has worked in the Oregon Legislature and on campaigns here and in California where she now lives, offered to help Naito-Campbell with media inquiries beginning in December 2017, as WW prepared to publish the article that would eventually run Feb. 7, 2018.
Stephen Houze, Dickson's attorney, accused Winterhalter of "plotting" with Naito-Campbell to take her story national and to publish a book about her experience as an alleged victim of sexual assault.
Houze read from what he said were 1,800 text messages the two women exchanged prior to and after publication of the story.
Winterhalter said that she prepared statements for Naito-Campbell, Naito-Campbell's family and for the real-estate business Naito-Campbell's grandfather, Bill Naito, built. She said she did so out of concern for her former boyfriend and his half-sister with whom he had such a strong relationship.
"She raised Wesley," Winterhalter testified. "And he was the best thing that happened to me for a very long time."
Winterhalter testified she never asked to be paid nor did she expect any benefits for herself or her political consulting business. Houze scoffed at that claim and suggested she'd taken on the business as a "loss leader" to curry favor with the Naito family and put herself in a position to win business in the future.
"You've made yourself attractive to them in the future," Houze said. "If you help deliver a conviction, you've done a big job for them…you've got a chance to cash in down the road."
Winterhalter called that line of questioning "insulting."
"If I wanted their money," she testified, "I could have married Wesley."
But the couple broke up in the middle of 2014, she testified, their relationship a casualty of the post-traumatic stress disorder Naito-Campbell suffered after the alleged 2012 sexual assault.
After this [the 2012 incident] happened, Wesley was never the same," Winterhalter testified. "I lost Wesley."
The state's case will continue on Tuesday at 9 am.
