Central Criminal Court
A woman has told a jury that after a Cork man raped her multiple times in her home he asked her if she was going to call the gardaí on him.
The accused man, who can not be identified for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape, anal rape, oral rape, two counts of aggravated sexual assault and assault causing harm to the woman at her home in Co Cork in January 2014.
The woman told Tom Creed SC, prosecuting, that she didn't consent to anything that happened between her and the accused that night.
She woke up having been slapped in the face and saw the man standing by her bed. The man had been at a party in her home earlier that night and she had allowed him to sleep on her couch.
She said she feared for her son who was asleep in another room and asked for him. The accused told her if she wanted to see her child again she should do as he told her.
“He ordered me to do what he wanted and called me a bitch every time,” the woman said after she outlined incidences of sex, anal sex and oral sex. She described herself as being terrified and said at one point of oral sex she felt like she was choking.
She said the sexual activity was repeated over again, maybe seven or eight times.
He asked her if she was not enjoying it before asking her if she had “anything big” he could use.
The woman told the jury all she could think of was a carrot. He told her to go downstairs and they both went to her kitchen, while he was holding her by the hair.
He took her to the fridge, she took out a carrot and they returned upstairs. She passed her son's bedroom and could see he was sleeping.
She was instructed to get back on the bed and he had sex with her again while putting the carrot in her anus. He slapped her across the buttocks, removed the carrot and had anal sex with her.
The incident came to an end and he used her phone to call for a taxi.
She said while they were waiting in her sitting room he said to her that he hoped she was “not going to call the shades” after he left.
She told him she didn't know what that meant but when he said he was referring to the gardaí, she assured him she wouldn't call them.
The woman said as soon as the accused left her home, she ran across to her neighbour and her parents and the gardaí were called.
She agreed with Ciaran O'Loughlin SC, defending, that when the man asked her if she had enjoyed sex, she told him she had. She said she said so because she was terrified.
She accepted a suggestion from counsel that his client would have been “under the impression” that he had done nothing wrong after she had also assured him she wouldn't call the gardaí.
The woman again told Mr O'Loughlin that she was terrified but agreed that he would have believed afterwards that it had all been consented to.
Counsel told her that his client accepted that all the sexual activity as she described it did happen but he says she consented to it.
He said the accused had no recollection of a carrot being involved and instructed that she left the room for two or three minutes during the incident to go downstairs.
The woman agreed that she did get the carrot but said the accused had told her to get it and he had gone to the kitchen with her.
The trial continues before Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy and a jury of six men and six women.
The woman told the jury that she allowed the accused to “crash on her couch” after a house party there and told him to lock the door behind him when he was leaving in the morning.
She said she went to bed, fell asleep but woke up later to the accused slapping her across the face.
She then saw the man standing beside her bed before he slapped her again. She tried to push him away but her thumb slipped into his mouth and he bit her.
The woman told the jury that the accused called her a bitch and instructed her to remove her pants, to get on the bed and bend over her with her head on the pillow.
She said the man then had sex with her in “a raping motion”. She described herself as being terrified and said the man then had anal sex with her before telling her to give him oral sex.
She said she felt like she was choking. He then made her get on top of him and she said this activity was repeated over again.
The woman said after it finished the accused asked her if she enjoyed it and said to her “you wanted this, didn't you”.
He asked why she was shaking and she said she just had a nerve problem with her leg because she didn't wanted him to think anything was wrong.