Woman denies threatening rape accused

A Corkwoman who alleges her neighbour raped her when she was 12-years-old has denied threatening him that she would send her uncle and father to kill him.

She also denied her sister arranged for the accused man’s car to be burnt and that her mother attacked him on the street when she made the accusation five years after the alleged incident.

The 39-year-old accused man, also from Cork, has denied sexually assaulting and raping her on dates unknown between June 1, 1995 and September 30, 1995.

The now 19-year-old woman said, in cross-examination by Mr Blaise O’Carroll SC during day two of the trial at the Central Criminal Court, that what the accused did to her had ruined her life.

She denied she made up the allegation of rape and said she finally decided to tell her mother about the incident in 1997 because she could no longer keep it “bottled up.”

She agreed it had taken her two years to tell her mother, and also agreed that her confession had been made “suddenly” on the day after she arrived home after having run away.

She agreed with Mr Carroll that she refused to undergo a medical examination a few months after she made the allegations because she was pregnant at the time and did not want the fact to be known.

She denied, however, that she did not know who the father of her child was or that she had named several different men as the father.

She told Mr O’Carroll that she did not know if she had bled or not when the man raped her. She had been too young to understand what had just happened and had taken a bath immediately after the alleged incident.

She alleges that the accused raped her and sexually asaulted her when she was babysitting her nephew in her sister’s flat which was located straight above that of his.

The alleged victim’s sister denied in evidence that she arranged for the man’s car to be set alight.

She said it did not seem “coincidental” that his car had burnt out the day after her sister made the allegations.

She also denied her father and uncle confronted the accused man and threatened him with a screwdriver following the allegations.

Her mother told the jury she had never punched the accused, as suggested by Mr O’Carroll, but she agreed that she did call him a rapist after meeting him on the street.