A 28-year-old Limerick woman has told a jury in the Central Criminal Court that she thought she was going to be murdered after being raped in December 1996.
The woman said she had agreed to go to a disco with a man she had met in a pub but he drove instead to a disused yard and raped her. The court also heard that the defendant, a 30-year-old Co Tipperary man, made a statement to gardai the next day, claiming she had consented to sexual intercourse.
Two gardai agreed with Mr Brendan Grogan SC, defending, that they could not find any marks to indicate a struggle had taken place at the scene of the alleged rape.
The only things found were coins which the alleged victim claimed had fallen from her pocket. The woman became hysterical when she accompanied gardai to the area. They said the defendant co-operated when arrested and did not appear to be hiding anything.
He has pleaded not guilty to raping and sexually assaulting the woman on December 29th, 1996.
She told the court: "I knew he was going to rape me and I believed he would then panic and kill me." She noted the registration number of his car when he dropped her home.
She told Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, she had started drinking in a pub at about 5 or 5.30 p.m. before attending Mass. Later she went to other pubs and drank six or seven pints of lager.
She met the defendant who was playing music and singing in a pub and she agreed to go to a disco with him after 11 p.m. She got into his car but instead of going to a hotel where a nightclub was being held, he drove into a disused yard.
She said tried to run from the car but he grabbed her, dragged her back to the car and raped her twice. Afterwards he said he hoped she was not going to tell the gardai and he drove her home. She was relieved he was not going to kill her, she said.
The woman said she went into her house and rang her boyfriend who was away from home.
Cross-examined by Mr Grogan, the woman denied she made the rape allegation because she felt she had let herself down by having sex with a stranger.
In reply to Mr Grogan, she said: "What are you saying? I didn't let myself down. He forced me and raped me."
Asked why she agreed to go to a disco with a stranger despite having a boyfriend, she replied that it was a "spur of the moment thing" as she only wanted to dance.
Mr Grogan put it to her that she had been seen leaving with the defendant and she felt drink had got the best of her. "The easy way out was to allege rape," he suggested. "He raped me," she answered.
The woman accepted she would have been drunk but she denied she fancied the defendant.
She said she could not remember what conversation she had with the defendant or how they walked from one pub to another. She did not remember, she said, if the defendant said it was 1 a.m. and too late to go to the disco. She did not say that was "no problem", she added.
The court was told the defendant told gardai they had three bouts of intercourse in his car. She asked him to meet her again and he said he would.
Before she left the car she tried to arrange a meeting for the next day but he said he did not think he could make it, he said in a statement.
The trial, before Mr Justice Smith and the jury, continues.