NEW YORK — Sobs and wails filled a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday as prosecutors in the sex abuse trial of fashion writer Peter Braunstein played the 911 call that his alleged victim made shortly after he left her apartment.

The voice on the recording, played one day after the woman testified on the witness stand, was barely audible as she attempted to describe her 12 hours of captivity with Braunstein.

Even as she begged for help, she refused to let uniformed officers into her home, less than 30 minutes after the departure of her captor, who had posed as a firefighter to gain access to her apartment.

Prosecutors allege that Braunstein dressed as a firefighter on Halloween 2005 and set two fires in the stairwell near the woman's apartment as a pretense to enter her home.

Once he was inside, the woman testified, he drugged her with chloroform, tied her to the bed and groped her throughout the night. During the attack, the woman said he wore a ski mask and a police shield dangling from his neck.

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The woman, who once worked in the offices of Fairchild Publications with Braunstein, said that she placed the phone call about 20 minutes after he left her home on Nov. 1, 2005.

On the tape, officers could be heard in the background banging on the door and identifying themselves as police while 911 operator Marian Grillo urged the woman to let them in.

"He had a badge, he had on a fire uniform, he had everything," the 36-year-old victim wailed in response to the 911 operator's pleas. "He said he was a fireman."

A friend who was with the woman testified Tuesday that she finally let them in after they showed badges and official identification.

"She was just in hysterics," testified makeup artist Jeanna Robinette, who was the first person the victim called after she freed herself from the bed.

Robinette said that she knew something was amiss the night before when she did not hear from her friend, with whom she had plans to go to a Halloween party.

When Robinette responded to her friend's tearful call the next morning, she said her face and neck were covered in burn marks from the chloroform. Her eye was swollen and she had ligature marks on her wrists so deep they were bleeding.

Braunstein, 43, who has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges stemming from the attack, appeared to pass in and out of consciousness throughout the testimony, occasionally raising his head and lifting his eyes toward the witness stand.

He was arrested in Memphis in December 2005 after stabbing himself in the neck, in what his lawyers called a suicide attempt.

Just as he did Monday, the first day of his trial, the tall, hulking defendant with salt-and-pepper hair wore a dusty beige sweater that covers the scars on his neck.

His lawyers claim he suffers from an undiagnosed mental defect, which prevented him from forming the conscious intent to commit a crime. His trial is expected to last three to four weeks.