Rape accused discharges legal team

A man charged with rape who has discharged his legal team and is defending himself, has told a jury he has been set up by gardaí because he "made a laugh of them" in a trial in 2000.

Mr Justice Daniel Herbert told the jury that the accused would now be representing himself and his wife would take notes for him, "as he is not terribly literate".

The 46 year-old north Dublin man also told the jury that he had warned gardaí a woman would be attacked.

He said that gardaí fabricated interview notes and statements containing admissions that he broke into the woman’s house and raped her.

The accused. Claimed that he was also set up by the real perpetrator, his nephew, who planted his (the accused’s) DNA at the scene.

He has pleaded not guilty to raping and falsely imprisoning a woman in her west Dublin home in the early morning of August 24, 2001, and to burglary of the house and theft of a mobile phone and cash on the same occasion.

The accused earlier told Mr Blaise O’Carroll SC (with Mr Charles Corcoran BL), defending before their discharge, that his relationship with his nephew was strained due to allegations made by two nieces of the accused that his nephew had raped them.

His nephew asked the accused to break into a woman’s house with him and "cut her up". The nephew was allegedly being paid to do this by the woman’s former husband.

The accused said he refused to get involved. He claims he rang Detective Sergeant Andy O’Rourke to tell him that a woman in Blanchardstown would be "sliced". He did this as he was concerned that his nephew would bring trouble to his family.

Detective Sergeant O’Rourke of Finglas Garda Station, who was called to give evidence by the accused, denied that the accused had given him information about a proposed attack on any woman. "That is a fantasy of your imagination."

Det Garda O’Rourke also denied that either niece had made any complaint to gardaí against the nephew of the accused.

Dr Deirdre O’Donnell, from the State Forensic Science Laboratory, earlier told the jury that DNA matching the accused was found on a condom at the scene and on swabs taken from the woman’s vagina.

Under cross examination, the accused told Mr Paul Coffey SC (with Ms Mary Rose Gearty BL), prosecuting, that the condom had been planted there by his nephew.

He said he had sex with a woman at a party a week before the alleged attack.. He used a condom which he left on the bedroom floor while he slept. He said it could not be found the next morning and believes his nephew took it to set him up.

"I am not going to leave evidence. I don’t deny being a criminal but I have a brain in my head."

Mr Coffey asked the accused how DNA matching his had been found at the entrance to the complainant’s vagina and how DNA matching that of the woman’s partner had been found on the condom.

Mr Coffey asked if the now deceased nephew had been a "criminal mastermind".

The accused said he did not know what had happened in the house during the alleged attack but that his nephew would know how to set somebody up, "it’s very easily done".

The accused said gardaí had fabricated notes and statements taken following his arrest on September 19, 2001 but accepted that a statement taken on May 16, 2003 had emanated from him.

The accused said in that statement that the woman had known what was going to happen to her, that she had staged the incident and that the accused and his nephew had sex with her. He said the woman had "put her kid off side for the night" and that her former husband was to walk in on events and be stabbed to death.

Asked by Mr Coffey why he would make this "vile suggestion" the accused said, "Maybe I did say it, I don’t know, I was in shock". He claims he made the May 2003 statement to uncover a garda conspiracy to set him up and "bring it all down".

The hearing continues before a jury of six men and six women.