Attempted rape charged after phone argument

A Havre man has been accused of attempting to rape a woman after an argument over a cellphone.

Matthew C. Chapman, born in 1990, is scheduled for his first court appearance Wednesday on a felony charge of attempted sexual intercourse without consent.

According to a charging document, Havre police officers responded to a call the evening of Jan. 12 from a Havre apartment complex reporting a disturbance, in which the dispatcher said a woman could be heard screaming in the background.

Officers who knocked on the door of the apartment in which the disturbance had been reported heard no answer until they announced they were law enforcement officers, the document says.

The woman who answered the door was crying, and her pants were unzipped and belt undone, the document says. She told the officers that Chapman, who had just left, tried to rape her.

The woman told officers that Chapman had been asking her to be his girlfriend for some time, but she had refused his advances. That night, he was going to give her a ride to Chinook, where she was going to stay with a friend, she said.

She told the officers she borrowed Chapman’s phone to check her Facebook account, and took it inside her apartment while she gathered items to take with her to Chinook, the document says.

Chapman then came into the apartment and demanded she give the phone back, the document says she told the officers. She said she locked herself in her bedroom and told him she would give the phone back as soon as she logged out of her account.

The woman told the officers that Chapman kicked the door open — the officers saw damage to the door, the document says — and went inside the room and again demanded she give him his phone.

The woman said that, after she told him to wait while she logged out, Chapman said “I guess I am going to have to rape you,” the document says.

She said he jumped on top of her and started pulling her clothes off. After she threw his phone, he got up, grabbed the phone and left, the document says.

She told the officers she waited to open the door when they arrived because she was afraid Chapman had returned, the document says.