Sexual assault charges against a Carson City man were sent to District Court for trial after a 16-year-old girl took the stand Monday in Justice Court to detail her allegations that she was raped by two men.
Ryan Pistoresi, 19, spent most of the two-hour hearing taking notes while the girl, 15 at the time of the alleged rapes, described how Pistoresi and his roommate Lloyd Hundley, 21, forced sexual acts on her while she was under the influence of alcohol.
Justice of the Peace Robey Willis found enough evidence Monday to send Pistoresi's case to District Court, where he faces four charges of sexual assault, one count of attempted sex and one count of battery to commit sexual assault. If convicted, he could serve life in prison. He is being held on $50,000 bail.
Hundley was scheduled to appear with Pistoresi, but waived the preliminary hearing, opting instead to face the sexual assault charges in District Court.
The girl, from Redding, Calif., said that while she was floating in and out of consciousness, she was unclothed and forced to engage in oral sex with Pistoresi. At one point she said Pistoresi was engaged in intercourse with her and "rolled me back over and he started choking me and suffocating me."
In a taped interview with Carson City Sheriff's Detective Steve Johnson at the time of his arrest, Pistoresi said the choking and suffocating were tantamount to a sexual fetish, an act of consensual sexual aggression.
"I thought she'd like it," he said during the interview. "I use verbal names and I use physical contact."
Later in the recording, he expressed remorse for the one-night-stand, but said his regrets were related to his decision to have sex with a minor.
Public defender Steve McGuire, Pistoresi's attorney, questioned the girl about whether she feared repercussions from her guardians for being out all night, apparently trying to establish that the girl lied about the rapes.
"There may be some regret about the acts that she willfully committed," he told Willis. "The girl has said that she wanted to have sex with my client."
Chief Deputy District Anne Langer countered, saying "I find it compelling that he takes a 15-year-old girl on the stand and says because of her delinquent acts, she deserves to get raped.
"They treated her like a piece of meat and raped her over and over again."
Citing a lack of evidence, Willis amended one charge of forced anal sex to attempted anal sex.
