‘My life, my name, everything is on the line’
A Cork man accused of raping a woman who died a year later testified yesterday that she told him he would be sorry for dumping her after sex.
The 42-year-old man on trial on charges of raping the 30-year-old woman denies six charges including rape and aggravated sexual assault by threat with a broken wine bottle.
The prosecution closed its case yesterday and the defendant got into the witness box to give evidence. He said that after the disputed sexual incident, which he said was always consensual, he walked her home from the house they had stayed in that night.
“We walked up the road together. It would have been a case of ‘Right, good luck.’ She said, ‘You had sex with me and now you are dumping me. You will pay for this.’ Now two years later I am sitting in the box paying for it,” said the accused.
He denied the allegations of a man who was present during some of the disputed incident in the bedroom of the house and, what he said were the allegations made by the woman. She died in May 2018, and Alice Fawsitt, prosecuting, said whatever information she gave to gardaí could not be put in evidence.
“I could not believe those charges were after being put on paper. These were invented by two mentally unstable people and continued by the guards,” said the man, adding that the woman said what she said as a result of a personality disorder.
He told Blaise O’Carroll, defending, that he had a conversation with the man who witnessed the disputed incident about the man’s schizophrenia, different medication, and how tablets were helping with visions and voices.
He said:
My life, my name, everything is on the line. I did not do what I am accused of. No matter what verdict comes back I am innocent
Ms Fawsitt said the defendant deliberately lied to the doctor in the Garda station in order to get tablets and that he was “a convincing liar”.
He said in response to a question that because of addiction he had been prepared to lie to get tablets but did not lie in general terms. The defendant said that on the occasion in January 2017, he accused the woman of taking tablets belonging to the other man and she admitted taking them and offered the man oral sex to make it up to him.
Then he said: “She beelined towards me and came on to me. She opened my pants. I knew what was happening. I let it happen to see how far it would go. She started to give me oral sex. She was also coming up and kissing me. It was not just raw. It was not as filthy as it sounds.
"She (opened her own clothes) While she had that down I did tear her knickers. It sounds terrible. It was something I had done before to other girls. It was heated. There was no force involved. She was making the sounds of enjoying it. She wanted what was happening just as much as I did.”
He said at one stage, he went into another bedroom and she followed him and they had sex in that room and it was all consensual.
The trial continues today at Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork. The accused denies all six charges against him, namely two counts of rape on January 14 2017. He denies also three charges of aggravated sexual assault and a sixth count of production of a weapon to intimidate.
