TITUSVILLE, Florida – A Titusville man and his wife planned on making and selling a pornographic video featuring a rape scene to pay off debts that threatened to take their home, the man’s defense attorney said Tuesday as testimony got under way.
Christopher Wood’s attorney, assistant public defender Jeffrey Nuss, claimed in his opening statement the wife decided to call police after the two argued in the car after the alleged attack. He said they argued about whether the video was “successful” and would generate enough money for them to keep their home.
Nuss said the couple faced foreclosure on their home if they did not come up with a bankruptcy payment the following week.
Wood, 31, faces life in prison if convicted on single charges of kidnapping and aggravated battery and six counts of sexual battery by use of great force. The trial began Monday.
Assistant State Attorney Anna Hixon said in her opening statement that Wood lured his wife to the Addison Canal by asking her to help lift a boat motor into a canoe. She described a brutal sexual attack that allegedly occurred when they came ashore in a rural, overgrown area west of Interstate 95.
Testimony is expected to continue today before Judge Charles M. Holcomb. Jurors have been told they will see the video.
Wood’s wife, whom FLORIDA TODAY will not name, testified Tuesday she was not involved in the plan to make the video and that she feared for her life during the attack in January.
The wife said she agreed to have sex with Wood when they pulled the canoe off the canal, and they attempted to do so but did not complete the act. She balked at having sex again when Wood removed a video camera from a bag that had been placed at the scene before they arrived.
But she testified that she consented after Wood pinned her down.
“I didn’t feel I really had a choice,” she said.
The couple had sex at that point, she said.
Then, the wife testified, Wood bound her hands in front of her and tied them to a tree branch. At one point, she was able to run but Wood chased after her, pinned her to the ground again and brought her back before tying her up more securely to a thicker rope he then adjusted so that her feet just touched the ground.
She said she thought Wood was making a noose and feared for her life when he slung a thicker rope through a “Y” in the tree branches.
The wife, who said she was wearing just her shoes as she was tied up, then testified that Wood bound her chest in wire and struck her with the blade of a hunting knife before using the knife, a bottle of hot sauce and golf balls to perform sexual acts. She said she submitted to sex a third time after promising to be cooperative in exchange for being taken down from the tree.
Nuss said the acts were consensual and a part of the rape scene that the couple believed would garner more money than a normal pornographic video. “It’s all an act made to look real,” he said.
The couple filed for bankruptcy in an effort to stave off foreclosure on their home, the wife testified.