HOLLIDAYSBURG — A Blair County jury will be asked today to render verdicts in a trial where a Tyrone-area woman, now 19, accused her mother’s ex-boyfriend of raping and sexually assaulting her five years ago, something he denies.

James G. Smith Jr., 39, Nanty Glo, who said he lived with the girlfriend and her daughter in Snyder Township for a little more than four years, became emotional on the witness stand Wednesday as he spoke of the allegations against him.

“No, I could never do such a thing … and I still don’t understand why she’d say something like this,” Smith said.

The woman was also emotional when she testified Tuesday as to how she was 14 years old and in eighth grade when Smith came into her bedroom while she was on her bed, playing online games with friends. She said she thought he was going to yell at her for being too loud.

Instead, the woman said Smith closed the door, took off his pants and held her to the bed and raped her as she smelled the alcohol on his breath.

“I was frozen,” she testified about her reaction. “I couldn’t do anything. It was like the world just stopped.”

Smith told the jury on Wednesday that he was never in the girl’s bedroom, although he said he may have poked his head inside while living with her and her mother. He also denied ever being home alone with her, although when the mother testified, she said she trusted Smith to be alone with her daughter.

The woman told the jury that the rape occurred while her mother was asleep on the living room couch. And it was followed by a second incident, she said, when Smith put his hands down her pants and sexually assaulted her.

While the woman offered no specific dates, she said the second incident occurred in the fall of 2019 when her mother was in and out of the hospital with pregnancy-related issues.

When Smith testified, he told the jury he stayed overnight at the hospital in Johnstown during the days prior to the girlfriend giving birth to their child on Nov. 22, 2019. As evidence of his whereabouts that week, Smith offered the work schedule he was able to keep and text messages he exchanged with references as to his whereabouts.

But when Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Mays asked Smith about two earlier occasions when the girlfriend was hospitalized overnight, Smith said he didn’t recall them. Subsequently, the prosecutor put Detective Kim Sanders on the witness stand to present certified records of the girlfriend’s hospitalization from Oct. 21-24, 2019, and from Oct. 28-31, 2019.

Krol said Smith’s research into his whereabouts focused only on November dates based on information he received after being arrested.

State police at Hollidaysburg charged Smith in August 2023 based on an investigation that developed in 2022 after the girl unexpectedly said something during an afterschool program about being sexually assaulted, prompting school personnel to talk with her and follow through with a required report shared with authorities. The revelation also led to a Jan. 3, 2023, interview at the Altoona Child Advocacy Center, where the girl — then 17 — was so emotional that she resorted to writing her answers on paper.

Charges filed against Smith indicate that one of her answers was “I was hurt, the R-word. I don’t like saying that.”

Mays also called in Philadelphia-area forensic psychiatrist Barbara Ziv to explain to the jury that delayed disclosure is normal for victims of sexual assaults.

“A high percentage of children who are sexually assaulted never disclose to anyone in their lives,” Ziv testified.