WINNIPEG -- A Winnipeg real estate agent didn’t waste a second defending herself from a man she says tried to rape her in his home.

“I had my pen in my hand and I stabbed him in the chest with it,” the 52-year-old woman testified Monday. “I think he was shocked at the speed of my reaction.”

Joseph Robert Davis, 38, is on trial charged with sexual assault. The Crown alleges Davis lured the woman to his home on Dec. 28, 2007, on the pretext of discussing the purchase of a home she had shown him.

The woman said she had only met the man that day.

“He said his name was Tom Collins, which I made a joke about,” she said.

The woman said she showed the man she knew as Tom Collins two houses on Walker Avenue and he quickly expressed interest in purchasing one of the homes.

“When you meet someone for the first time it’s unusual, to say the least, that they would make an offer after such a short time,” she said.

The woman said she visited Collins at his McGregor Street apartment later that evening, at his request, to write up an offer to purchase.

The woman said she was in the man’s bedroom using his computer to call up some real estate listings when she got up to retrieve some documents from another room. Before she reached the door, she said the man “put one arm on my crotch, the other around my neck and flipped me on the bed.”

The woman stabbed her attacker with a pen, ripped his glasses from his head and kneed him in the groin before running out of the apartment.

“I came from a fairly abusive marriage,” she said. “I knew I was going to get hurt unless I did something.”

As the woman ran to her car, the man “looked scared,” she said. “He started talking about turning himself in. He said he still wanted to make an offer.”