A 25-year-old woman returned to the witness stand Wednesday, six years after she first testified about allegedly being raped and sexually assaulted when she was an adolescent.

The woman testified before a Westmoreland County jury she was 12 when she was subjected weekly rapes and other sexual activity at the hands of Bruce Palmer of Unity.

She alleged his former fiancée and now wife, Marie Farabaugh-Palmer, was aware of the sexual assaults but took no action to stop them after they began in 2011 and lasted until 2014.

Palmer, 39, is charged with rape, aggravated assault, indecent assault, statutory sexual assault and child endangerment.

He was initially convicted of those offenses following a trial in 2018 and sentenced to serve four to eight years in prison.

Farabaugh-Palmer, 45, was convicted at the same trial of lesser counts of child endangerment and reckless endangerment and ordered to serve two years on probation.

Both convictions were overturned and the sentences vacated in 2019 by Common Pleas Judge Tim Krieger. He ruled the woman’s testimony at trial a year earlier was deficient of specifics and corroborative detail, not credible, and that her emotional outbursts in and out of the courtroom were deliberate attempts to sway jurors.

TribLive does not identify alleged victims of sexual assaults. The woman was emotional during her testimony Wednesday in which she detailed the alleged sexual assaults by Palmer and her attempts to disclose them to Farabaugh-Palmer. She conceded she did not reveal the allegations to anyone else for several years.

Assistant District Attorney Adam Barr, in his opening statement to the jury, said the accuser’s allegations are credible.

“No one has listened (to her) for years,” Barr said. “It’s time for people to listen to her. It’s time to give her justice by doing the right thing.”

Defense: Accusations are false

Defense lawyer Tim Dawson said Palmer was falsely accused.

“It is our position these rapes never happened. It’s a fabrication of a troubled teenager,” Dawson said. “You have to put emotions aside. This may be a case where there is no victim.”

Dawson said Palmer and his wife are expected to testify later in the trial.

Defense attorney Valerie Veltri, representing Farabaugh-Palmer, said her client and her husband are victims of false allegations.

“We are going to prove why these allegations were made,” Veltri said.

Testimony continues Thursday.

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