CHICAGO — A man accused of sexually assaulting a woman in the suburbs in January is now accused of sexually assaulting a second woman at his Wrigleyville apartment before officials charged him with the first case.
The Patch reported in February that Ethan Livingston, 28, had been charged with sexually assaulting a married woman who had an affair with him after he tried to extort money from her to cover up their relationship.
Prosecutors said Livingston and the women started a relationship after meeting on a dating app last year, the news outlet reported. After the woman ended the affair, Livingston allegedly learned that she was married and then demanded $10,000 from her in exchange for her silence.
The woman “felt compelled” to continue to have sex with Livingston to keep him from exposing their relationship, according to the allegations.
At a Glenview hotel in mid-January, Livingston allegedly threatened to tell the woman’s husband about their affair, grabbed her by the throat, and sexually assaulted her, the Patch reported.
Livingston posted a $2,000 bail deposit and went home to await trial.
But about two weeks after the hotel incident and before prosecutors filed charges in the case, Livingston arranged to meet with another woman he had been chatting with on the Bumble app, prosecutors said this month.
Before going out with Livingston, the 25-year-old woman told him she did not want to have any physical relationship with him, and she told two friends where she was going, according to a transcript of his bail hearing.
The woman also shared her phone’s location with her friends so they would know where she was. She asked them to check in with her occasionally and sent them Livingston’s picture from Bumble.
She picked Livingston up at his apartment in the 900 block of West Dakin around 8:30 p.m. on February 2, and they went to Al’s Beef, then returned to his place to eat the meal, prosecutors said.
The woman later told investigators that she felt fine after having three glasses of wine with her food. But she became suspicious when Livingston said he was going across the street to buy more wine, but he returned very quickly with an already open box.
Livingston poured her a glass from the new box, and she began feeling faint after a couple of sips, prosecutors allege.
The woman went in and out of consciousness four times over the next few hours. After waking up the first time, she Facetimed her friend, but she was mumbling and didn’t make much sense, according to prosecutors.
She told her friend she would call an Uber but lost consciousness again.
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Prosecutors said the woman became physically ill when she awakened the second time, then passed out again, only to wake up a third time as Livingston sexually abused her.
According to the allegations, the woman threw up again and realized that both she and Livingston were naked. Officials said she texted her friends around this time, but later learned that her messages were “jumbled letters” that made no sense.
After passing out again, she awakened around 2 a.m., noticed her friends had been trying to contact her, and arranged for one of their boyfriends to pick her up.
That man called 911 after locating the victim, but she told police that nothing happened and that she was okay. Prosecutors said she appeared highly intoxicated and rambled on video recorded by the officers’ body cameras.
She went to her doctor the next day and then to a hospital to have a sexual assault evidence kit collected, which tested positive for male DNA. While she was at the hospital, Livingston sent her a Snapchat video of his penis with a message saying that he had sex with her the night before, according to prosecutors.
The woman filed a police report that day and allegedly identified Livingston in a photo lineup a few weeks later.
Attorney Brian Sexton represented Livingston during the bail hearing, telling Judge David Kelly that there was no toxicology evidence showing the woman was drugged and no report of any physical injury. The case is “going to be a ‘he said/she said,'” Sexton argued, according to the court transcript.
“He actually reached out to her and asked her to pay for the Afghan that she got sick on. He wasn’t trying to hide anything or anything like that,” Sexton continued.
He suggested that prosecutors filed the charges to bolster their allegations in the suburban case, which he said the Cook County state’s attorney’s office rejected when police presented it to them.
“The detective then went to several supervisors and got charges approved later,” said Sexton.
He said the suburban case is much different from what prosecutors alleged, too.
“It’s not some kind of date rape or anything like that. It was a girl he met … where they dated for like ten months,” Sexton continued. “And in that case, he found out she was married. He wanted to go tell the husband what was going on, she offered to pay him, later on she told the police that he was extorting her.”
“They are trying to buttress that other case,” Sexton claimed. “She’s the one that actually drank wine. They had consensual sex. And, actually, she did get sick on his Afghan. In fact, Judge, he even told her about him being arrested for that other case.”
Livingston has a doctorate in physical therapy from Baylor University and worked as a physical therapist in downtown Chicago for several years, according to Sexton’s court presentation.
Judge Kelly ordered Livingston to pay a $20,000 bail deposit to be released from jail. He’s charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault in the Wrigleyville case.