Alleged rape followed beating, court told

A 35-year-old English man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with raping a woman in Bandon, Co Cork.

A 35-year-old English man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with raping a woman in Bandon, Co Cork.

The accused denies raping the 28-year-old and has also pleaded not guilty to threatening to kill or cause serious harm to her on the same occasion on January 22nd and 23rd, 2002.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Mr Paul Coffey SC (with Mr Seán Guedrin) told the jury that the accused had already pleaded guilty to a charge of assault causing harm to the woman.

He said that a week prior to the alleged offence the two had met as she chatted with others outside a homeless hostel in Cork city. He approached her again later that week and she went for a drink with him in the pub.

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Mr Coffey said they went back to his caravan and spent a period of time together.

On Tuesday January 22nd he said their relationship, which had been uneasy before that, "became particularly so then." Mr Coffey said the accused wanted to take the woman back to the hostel where she had been staying to get her clothes. She refused and he became furious with her.

Mr Coffey said it was the prosecution's case that the accused threatened to kill her, repeatedly beat her and threatened her with a scissors which he stabbed into a cupboard. She would tell the jury the events culminated in the accused raping her.

The alleged victim told Mr Coffey that when the accused first approached her he said she was a good-looking girl who shouldn't be in the homeless hostel.

Some time later she said she was talking to one of her friends, who was a prostitute, when she was approached by the accused. He went with her and two of her friends to a pub and she was later left alone with him. She said he asked her to go to Limerick with him but she refused.

During the time they spent together he beat her and struck her on the face, as well as attacking her with a scissors, a butter knife and a fork. She described his alleged rape of her as "horrible and disgusting"

The hearing continues before Mr Justice Henry Abbott.