Co Down soldier denies date rape charge

A woman today broke down in a court when asked to identify a soldier she has accused of drugging and raping her.

Robert Lyttle, 26, from Northern Ireland denies drugging the 21-year-old student without her knowledge and sexually assaulting her.

Lyttle from Bangor, Co Down, is accused of sexually assaulting the complainant outside a rugby club in Edinburgh on February 15 and 16 last year.

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, broke down on the first day of the trial at the High Court sitting in Edinburgh.

She told the court she had four vodkas and another spirit on the night of the alleged assault but insisted she was not drunk when she met Lyttle in a night club in the city’s Lothian Road.

The woman said the accused had approached her in the Subway West End, where she was on a night out with friends.

She claimed he persistently offered her a drink of an alcoholic beverage called Wicked, containing a mixture of vodka and Irn Bru, which she had sipped.

‘‘He was gesturing the drink to and seemed really eager for me to drink it but I don’t like that drink,’’ the court heard.

‘‘I had a sip to keep him quiet really because he was annoying me by putting it in my face all the time.’’

She told the court that things then went ‘‘a bit hazy’’ and by the end of the night she was staggering up the stairs of the night club.

She kept losing her balance, adding: ‘‘I was just all over the place.’’

The student told the court she left the club alone at the end of the night to catch a taxi when the accused pulled up in a car and asked her to get in.

Lyttle, she said, became aggressive and began swearing as he told her to get in the car after she refused.

‘‘I got in the back and he said: ‘You could have got in the front, I don’t bite you know’,’’ she said.

She remembered being outside what she later identified to police as Boroughmuir Rugby Club in Edinburgh’s Meggetland.

The complainant alleged that Lyttle then stripped her and forced her to carry out sex acts before raping her as she lay in the back of the car.