A 41-year-old man has gone on trial in the Central Criminal Court charged with raping a woman in Co Cork last year. The 30-yearold woman, from Britain, denied a defence suggestion that she had initiated consensual intercourse by saying she had not had it "for months". She claimed he forced himself on her and choked her to stifle her shouts for help. The accused man pleaded not guilty before Mr Justice Carney and a jury yesterday to raping and sexually assaulting her on July 18th, 1997.
The woman told Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley SC that she had been working in Ireland for some time before she went to the Cork town. She was walking through the town after 8 a.m. and met the accused man and his brother who were drinking cider in the open air. They spoke to her and she had a few sips from the bottle before going off to see if she could get a social welfare payment. She visited two social welfare offices but was not given any money because she did not have an address.
When she left the second office she again met the man who, she said, must have followed her. She explained her problem to him and he said she might be able to use his relative's house as an address.
They walked to the house but the relative was not in. As they passed a grassy area he asked her in a friendly manner to sit down and she did. "He asked me to kiss him but I didn't want to. That is when he started to get nasty," she said. She alleged he forced her down on the ground, lifted up her skirt, removed her underpants and penetrated her with his finger.
She told Mr Buckley that he was threatening her all the time and then asked her to get on top of him. He raped her, she said, and when she tried to shout he put his hand around her throat very tightly. "I did not consent. I was very scared," she said.
When a woman walked by with a young boy, the accused man started to panic and stopped what he was doing. "I shouted out to her and she told him to let me go but he wouldn't. She said it again and he did," the woman said. She went to gardai with the woman and later she noted she had a bruise on the left side of her neck.
Cross-examined by Mr Ciaran O'Loughlin SC, the woman denied that she had ever met the defendant or his brother before July 18, 1997, or that she consented to intercourse with the accused man.
She said it was not true to say they agreed to accompany her to the dole office. The defendant tried to give her money but she threw it back at him. She could not remember if she had bought more cider for him using money he had given her but she denied drinking a whole bottle herself.
She agreed the defendant was carrying her bag when gardai in a patrol car stopped to speak to him shortly before the alleged rape. Mr O'Loughlin suggested that the accused man told the gar dai: "I bet you never thought I could pull a bird like this." She said she had not clearly heard what he had said, she thought he had said she was good looking.
She denied the defendant thought at all times she was being his girlfriend or that she had initiated intercourse by telling him she wanted sex. The trial continues.