It's no vicarage tea party, judge warns jurors

MR Justice Moriarty warned the jury the case wouldn't fall "within the realms of a vicarage tea party", and he wasn't wrong. He made the remark when the five male and seven female jurors were recalled after early legal argument over the "robust" nature of the prosecution's opening statement.

In this, the defendant, Cathal Ryan, had been compared with the footballer and alleged wife beater Paul Gascoigne. He had also been accused of "sending daddy with flowers" when his father, millionaire businessman Tony, visited Michelle Rocca after the alleged assault on her in 1992.

The judge conceded the remarks were "marginally unhappy" but said lawyers tended to underestimate the capacity of jurors to tell what was evidence and what was not. Anyway, he added, it was in the nature of these cases that "a measure of sparks is going to fly".

And fly they did. Taking the stand, Ms Rocca told the court she felt like a "Belsen victim" after being punched, kicked and dragged around a bedroom in the house at Blackhall Stud, Co Kildare, where she and the defendant had been attending a party.

She had gone there as his partner, she insisted, optimistic of a long term reconciliation with the man by whom she had a four month old daughter. But she had been worried during the evening, because "he was drinking and I knew what he was like when he was drinking".

When she found him in bed upstairs with a woman, she called him "a bastard or a bollocks, or something like that". The next thing she could remember was a "bang" and a "flash" and she was on the floor. Later, she was dragged from the room by her hair and clothes: "At one stage, he went AWOL completely and I thought I was going to die."

In cross examination, it was put to her that she was not invited to the party with the defendant and that, moreover, she had been warned by the hostess to "behave herself" if she came. She denied this and also denied knowing that Mr Ryan had been going out with his female companion for several months.

Challenged about her own drinking that evening, she said she'd had no more than "three dry martinis". Asked if she had directed "a stream of foul mouthed invective" at the woman in the bed, she said: "Well, we didn't really have a one to one conversation."

Throughout her 90 minute testimony, Cathal Ryan sat taking notes and occasionally passing them to his legal team. He showed little or no reaction to anything that was said, but friends sitting behind him frequently shook their heads or smiled ironically at Ms Rocca's testimony.

The former Miss Ireland gave her evidence calmly, although she was frequently restrained by her counsel for speaking too fast or straying into prejudicial comment.

She lost her composure only once, when she spoke of a "stranger from Ryanair" who, after the alleged incidents, proposed a legal arrangement for the maintenance of her daughter. "I just hated that guy standing there talking about my child," she said, breaking into tears. "I knew I was a beaten woman and I was trying to regain some dignity. I didn't want any more shit in my life."