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The former husband said he was illiterate when he married the then-19-year-old woman. She taught him to read, he said, and was kind and patient during the process. After months of tutoring and many evenings spent paging through beginning-level books, he said, he was finally able to fill out his own job applications.

"She never downed me for that," he said. "She loved me for who I was." He said he saw her after the accusations of rape were reported and she appeared distressed.

As newlyweds, the couple moved to Concord, Calif., where the woman was assigned to the USS Mount Hood, an ammunition ship. She was often away at sea for days or weeks, and tensions flared in the marriage, her former husband said.

"She was young," he said.

Along the way, the woman became interested in another sailor, a man who would later father her children, the former husband said. The two separated as the new relationship began, he said. Six months later, she was discharged from the service.

A U.S. Navy spokesman would not release the reason for the discharge, though records indicate it came less than nine months before she had her first child, a boy, named after his father.

Court records show the divorce became final after she gave birth. She continued her relationship with the sailor, and the two had a second child. Soon after, the couple parted ways. In 2003, the children's father was ordered by a Durham court to have a portion of his paycheck, about $400 a month, withheld for child support, court records show. He was also ordered to pay more than $2,700 in public assistance to the children.

Back in Durham, where her parents still live, the woman tried several jobs to support her children, including working in an assembly line for a computer company and various sales jobs, her former husband said.

In trouble with the law

One summer night in 2002, excessive drinking led to charges that the woman stole a car and led officers on a reckless car chase.

The episode started at the Diamond Girls club on Angier Avenue in Durham. According to Larry W. Jones, the owner of Diamond Girls, the woman appeared at the club that night and "tried out," giving lap dances to a few men.

Jones said the manager at the time did not offer the woman a job because she was "acting funny."

She started dancing for a taxi driver, whom she asked for a ride, according to a report from the Durham County Sheriff's Office. While dancing, she took the keys from the driver's pocket without his knowledge and, minutes later, drove off in his taxi.

The cab driver called 911 and a sheriff's deputy responded and saw the blue 1992 Chevrolet Caprice heading east on Angier Avenue near Page Road. The headlights were off and the woman was driving on the wrong side of the road, according to the deputy's report.

The woman sped up to pass the officer, and he began to chase the taxi, which ran a stop sign and veered across the road, weaving across a grass median, onto the shoulder and back. The car sped from Angier Avenue onto U.S. 70, the report said.

According to the report, the woman drove down the center of the highway, a 55 mph zone, at 70 mph, heading into Raleigh. She kept speeding, drove the wrong way down Brier Creek Parkway and turned into a dead end, where she tried to drive the taxi through a fence.

The sheriff's deputy said he got out of his car and told the woman to turn off the car. She laughed, backed up the car, then drove forward again and nearly hit the deputy, the report said.

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