A 35-year-old former cop made an April 13 appearance in the courthouse attached to the Charlottesville Police Department, where he was employed as a patrol officer when he allegedly pressured a woman to her knees, unzipped his pants and forced her to perform oral sex while on the job.
In a lengthy testimony, the victim described the events that took place in the early morning hours of November 18, when Christopher Seymore responded to a drunk driving incident on her street and entered her Shamrock Road apartment to ask about what she saw.
C-VILLE does not release the names of sexual assault victims.
The victim testified that she sat on her couch with the officer while he waited for a truck to tow the abandoned and damaged vehicle from the scene. He said she was beautiful and he recognized her from a bar on The Corner that she used to manage. When the tow truck finally arrived, he left some of his equipment in her living room and said he’d be back to get it, she said.
He then left the apartment.
Exhausted, she approached him near the tow truck and asked if he could come in and get it because she wanted to go to bed. He told her he’d be back soon, the woman said.
About five minutes later, she said Seymore returned with his badge covered and his body camera removed from his vest.
“He was just very different this time,” she said, adding that he was looking around her apartment in a “weird fashion” and told her he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. “He kept saying how pretty I was and then he shut the front door.”
She then described his “dry, thin lips” kissing her.
“I guess I didn’t push him away,” she said. “It was very clear to me that I had no choice.”
She described the way he lifted her shirt, fondled her breasts and with his hand on her shoulder, he pushed her down to her knees. “His penis was in my face and that gun [on his hip] was staring at me,” she said. When it was over, she rushed to the bathroom to clean up, she testified.
Becoming emotional in the courtroom, the victim said Seymore immediately started to apologize and did so over and over and asked her not to tell anyone. When he stepped out of the house, he came back to the door several times before he finally left.
“I was just in shock,” she said. “I wanted to feel safe. I would’ve said anything to get him out of there.”
The victim testified that she took ZzzQuil to help her sleep that night, and around 7am, she heard knocking on her bedroom window. Then the kitchen door. It was him.
“I should have never opened the door,” she said. Seymore entered her house in plain clothes, made small talk about the drunk driver from the night before, began apologizing profusely, again, for what happened between them, started kissing her and led her to her bedroom where he took off his jacket, pulled down his pants and “sprawled himself on my bed as if he owned my house.”
Testified the victim, “He kept saying, ‘Do you like what you see?’ and motioned for her to perform oral sex on him again. After ejaculating “in 2.5 seconds,” he got himself together and before he left, he said, “Next time I would like to fuck,” she told the judge.
She said she agreed not to tell anyone what happened. “I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I didn’t think anybody would believe me over a cop.” But after two weeks of no sleep, she called another CPD officer she trusted to ask for the name of his colleague who signed for the tow truck on November 18—because Seymore covered his badge, and when she asked for his name, he said, “Chris, that’s all you need to know.”
The officer convinced her to tell him what happened, she said, and once she did, he said he had no choice but to report it.
A lieutenant with the CPD testified that Seymore, who lives in Goochland, admitted on December 1 to receiving oral sex from her on two occasions, but said they were consensual.
In Charlottesville General District Court, Judge Robert Downer certified Seymore’s charges to the grand jury, which will hear his case in June.
