LIVINGSTON — A woman told a Livingston Parish jury on Friday that she was so intoxicated during a videotaped sexual encounter 12 years ago that she has no idea who initiated it.

What happened to the woman is key to allegations against Melanie Curtin, whose retrial on a rape charge opened this week. Curtin is accused of assaulting the woman while she was incapacitated, and also of videotaping the encounter.

Curtin was drawn into the case as sex-crimes investigators pursued Dennis Perkins, a former Livingston Parish deputy convicted with his wife, Cynthia, of assaults involving children. None of the allegations against Curtin involve juveniles.

The woman who testified at Curtin's trial told jurors that, late on the night of Nov. 7, 2014, she had invited Curtin and her son to her home to watch a movie. At the time, the woman knew Curtin from the ballpark where their sons played.

Under questioning by state prosecutors, the woman said she had been drinking cocktails from a can and was already drunk when Curtin arrived. According to texts on Nov. 8, 2014, Curtin told the woman she had passed out the night before, and Curtin asked throughout the day how the woman was doing. The woman said she had a hangover and a headache.

After Perkins was arrested several years later, the attorney general's office said they found video of a sexual encounter, including Perkins, Curtin and the woman from that night, and showed the woman screenshots taken from the video. The recording ultimately led to criminal charges.

Curtin was previously tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal said the trial judge erred when he admitted some evidence harmful to Curtin and rejected other items that could have benefited her case.

Lawyers for the state had sought to keep the public out of the courtroom as the woman testified, but courts rejected the idea after Curtin's lawyers argued that open courtrooms discourage perjury.

Perkins and his wife were arrested in October 2019 and ultimately faced 150 counts alleging they raped two children and an adult, produced child pornography and served schoolchildren baked goods contaminated with a bodily fluid. Perkins is serving 100 years in prison after pleading guilty to a variety of charges, and Cynthia Perkins was sentenced to 41 years.