When a 14-year-old girl decided in 2008 to volunteer at the hospital where a family member worked, “it sounded like a good plan,” Assistant District Attorney Leora Joseph told a Suffolk Superior Court jury today as trial began for the patient accused of raping the girl.

“It’s this defendant’s deliberate and planful actions that have brought us here today.”

VERNON THOMPSON (D.O.B. 1/28/70), a former patient at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain, is charged with two counts of rape of a child for allegedly bringing the victim to a stairwell in one of the hospital’s buildings and raping her.

On her first day as a volunteer, Joseph said, the victim encountered the defendant as she walked the short distance from the main hospital building to a personnel building where her relative worked.

“He saw [the victim] that first day and asked her for her phone number,” Joseph said of Thompson. Unsure of what to do, the victim gave him her number.

“He began to call her repeatedly,” Joseph said.

A few days later, the victim again encountered Thompson on the hospital grounds.

“He was on a break,” Joseph said. “He had privileges, and he was allowed to be free around the Shattuck. He came up to her, he put his arm around her – you will see the physical differences between the two of them – and he guided her to an area of the Shattuck where there are few people, where there are no cameras.”

It was in that area of the hospital where Thompson raped the victim, Joseph said. An employee at the hospital happened upon the assault, but even then “he did not immediately stop what he was doing,” Joseph said. Following the assault, he asked the victim again for her phone number.

The victim stopped working as a volunteer at the hospital. She later disclosed the rape to a family member. After reporting the rape, she was transported to an area hospital, where Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the Leverett Circle Barracks responded to interview her and launch their investigation.

After conducting multiple interviews, they obtained a complaint against Thompson in West Roxbury District Court.

The State Police investigation was bolstered by an extensive investigation behind the closed doors of the Suffolk County Grand Jury, which returned indictments on Sept. 19.

Jillian Quigley is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Thompson is represented by attorney Joan Stanley. The trial is ongoing before Judge Raymond Brassard in courtroom 815.