Alleged rape victim says she was told ‘shut up’

A homeless woman has told a trial that one man laughed and smirked while his friend raped her in a Dublin hotel.

The two Dublin men, aged 27 and 40 years, have pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping the woman at George Frederic Handel Hotel, Fishamble St on March 27, 2012.

On day two of the trial, the alleged victim described how one of the men raped her while the other looked on.

Pauline Walley, prosecuting, previously told the jury that this second accused was “as much a perpetrator as if he had physically penetrated her himself”.

The alleged victim said she met the two accused, who she said she did not know, in a pub. The first man was coming on to her but she told him she was not interested.

She later kissed him in the pub. The woman left alone around midnight but met the two accused again because they asked for help getting a hotel room for the night.

The men were afraid they would be refused a room because they were Travellers, she said. The witness said she met them and went to two hotels but were told no rooms were available.

They then went to Handel’s hotel where they were given a room. The woman said she went up to the room with the two accused but never intended to stay.

She said that after five minutes of “chit chat” she went to leave but the first man pushed her back on a bed. He pulled off her dress and underwear and held her down with his chest and her hair down with one hand.

“I was panicking. I asked him to stop, get off me, what are you doing? He raped me,” she said. She cried during some of her testimony.

She said the second man was at the window and was watching and she started pleading with him.

“I asked him to please tell him to stop. I was pleading with him. He told me to shut up. He was saying, ‘is she any use?’. He said ‘let it happen, it’s gonna happen’.”

She added: “He seemed to find it funny, smirking, laughing, asked was I any use”. She said this man later told her he knew where she lived and threatened to throw her out of a window if she went to gardaí.

The court heard the first man later told gardaí the woman had consented to having sex with him. She told the court this wasn’t true and said she asked him to stop.

The woman accepted that CCTV footage showed her hugging the accused.

The trial continues .