I can rape you if I want, man told wife

A man told his wife “I can rape you if I want” sometime before raping her and threatening to cut her face open with a knife.

Before the alleged rape, the 42-year-old is alleged to have doused the living room with lighter fluid while the couple’s child was in the house, a trial at the Central Criminal Court has heard.

The woman told the court she and her husband had been arguing because she had said the relationship was over, but he told her that “it will be my choice if we ever separate”. She said her husband pushed her upstairs and, when he saw her looking at her phone, told her: “The guards will never arrive in time, don’t even think about it.”

The complainant told the jury she knew what her husband wanted when he then came into the bedroom naked. “I just said to myself, ‘you’ve just got to do this, because he’s going to kill you. You’ve nowhere to go’,” she told Mary Rose Gearty, prosecuting. “I just kept saying to myself ‘just survive, just survive’.”

She said her husband was saying “a stream of stuff” and called her a “cold fucking bitch” before raping her. She said she left the next day and obtained a temporary barring order against him.

The accused has pleaded not guilty to rape, assault causing harm, and five counts of threats to kill or cause serious harm between May 24 and August 1, 2014.

The jury heard he has already pleaded guilty to a count of assaulting his wife with a hammer in August 2014.

The woman gave evidence that there was “tension” in the marriage six months after the birth of their child. She told the court her husband said she was giving all her attention to the child and he was feeling very left out.

In 2012, she had been promoted to a senior position in her job while her husband had been let go from his, she said.

She said she told him she wanted to separate in March 2014. Soon afterwards she said he head-butted her in the kitchen. When their child came in, the accused allegedly told him: “Your mam hit her head.”

The woman said she stayed at her parent’s house with her child for the next two nights. When she returned, she said there was a strange smell in the house and the accused was sitting in the living room smoking cigarettes. He allegedly said he had poured petrol around the house.

The woman said she found an empty container of lighter fluid and became very scared for the safety of their child, who was upstairs asleep.

She said over the following nights, the accused would pace the floor, becoming increasingly aggressive and telling her they weren’t separating. “One night he said, ‘As long as we’re both staying in this house I’m going to have sex with you’,” she told the court.

She said he became aggressive and told her “I can do this if I want; I can rape you if I want.” The woman said the alleged rape occurred sometime after this on May 25, 2014.

The case continues.