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.”