GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Former Grand Rapids Police Officer Ryan Bruggink will head to trial on charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and home invasion.
Bruggink, 24, is accused of raping his ex-girlfriend at her Wyoming home last November.
During a preliminary hearing Wednesday, the alleged victim testified that Bruggink drove to her house drunk, broke in, and passed out on her couch. That’s when she said she went to bed.
The woman claims that Bruggink woke up, came into her room, and then sexually assaulted her in bed next to her sleeping 7-month-old daughter. She then said, “Let’s go to the couch,” because of her daughter, and that’s where he assaulted her for a second time, she said.
“I was fighting him,” she said. “He grabbed me, and turned me around on the couch by my neck and put my face into the arm of the couch. I told him, ‘No.’ I told him stop, and he was holding my hands behind me, and then he just kept trying to get it in. He had let go of one of my hands, and that’s when I punched him.”
She said Bruggink called her the next day to apologize. “He said, ‘I just want to call and tell you I’m sorry,’ and I was like, ‘Sorry for what? do you know what happened last night?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we had consensual sex,’ and he laughed about it.”
She texted him days later, and he didn’t recognize her number, she testified. In response to Bruggink removing her contact info from his phone, she said to him, “You deleted my number, already?”
Bruggink was charged in January.
His attorney, Robert Hackett, painted a much different story about what happened. The two met online, he told the court. The alleged victim admits their relationship immediately turned sexual, he said, and that they both enjoyed rough sex, which is what Bruggink claims happened the night of the alleged incident.
“You’re claiming that he’s broke into your house and he brutalized you?” Hackett asked the woman. “Do you not see something wrong with you being able to go and lay down and go to sleep?”
She responded by saying she didn’t think Bruggink would wake up.
“I mean, you didn’t call for help at that point, did you? In fact, you didn’t call for help at all,” Hackett said.
The alleged victim would often smirk during the hearing while explaining what happened that night, which led Bruggink’s attorney to ask her if she thought the situation was funny. “It’s serious for you, and it’s serious for Mr. Bruggink,” he said.
Bruggink then allegedly asked her why the couple stopped dating. She said she found out through Facebook that he had a girlfriend, which is something she admitted to confronting him about. Hackett then asked if she ever threatened to ruin his relationships or career. While she said she never threatened him, she did admit to telling him that because he hid his new relationship, it could ruin those relationships if she was mad enough, but, she said, she wasn’t mad enough.
He was a GRPD officer at the time of the alleged incident, and he was suspended on Dec. 1, 2014. He resigned one day later.
