A woman has denied concocting a rape accusation and ripping her underwear to make her claims appear more convincing. The 20-year-old woman has claimed she was raped by a 23-year-old man she met at a disco in Drogheda, Co Louth.
She was being cross-examined before a jury at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday. The accused man has pleaded not guilty to charges of rape, oral rape and sexual assault of the alleged victim in his flat in the early morning of September 10th, 1995.
A doctor who examined the woman 18-20 hours after the alleged incident said she found multiple small bruises on her neck, arm, hips, thighs, knees and vaginal area. She told Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley, prosecuting, that the bruises could have been consistent with excessive force by a thumb.
She told Mr Barry White, defending, the bruises were fresh and could have been estimated in the three-to four-hour timespan.
The woman told the court she went to the Man Friday nightclub in Drogheda on September 9th, 1995, at 11 p.m. with her sister, brother and friends. She met the accused man and they kissed. At about 2 a.m. she went with him to his flat, telling him a number of times that she would have to go home soon. She went inside because she did not want to be rude.
The man offered her a drink and cannabis but she refused both. They kissed for a while but when she tried to leave he raped her, she said. She ran out into the street and later met her brother and sister who had been looking for her. She told them that the accused had tried to rape her.
Mr White suggested she had kissed the man in the flat and he desisted when she indicated that, unlike him, she did not want to have sexual intercourse. She said this was not true.
Mr White said her brother and sister had been greatly concerned because she had not turned up to go home and she had "concocted" the rape claim, which she denied.