Rape trial nears conclusion

The concluding stages have been reached in the trial at the Central Criminal Court of a man charged with raping a prostitute in her Dublin flat.

The 35-year-old Lithuanian man pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial to charges of rape and anal rape of the woman on May 27, 2006 but following submissions by defence counsel, Mr Brendan Grehan SC the second charge has been reduced by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy to attempted anal rape.

The jury of four women and eight men has heard closing addresses by prosecuting counsel, Mr Michael J Durack SC (with Mr Damian Collins BL), and from Mr Grehan (with Mr Sean Gillane BL), and will start deliberating on Monday when Mr Justice McCarthy gives his legal directions and reviews the evidence.

During the five-day hearing, the jury has learned that after the accused said he wanted to find a prostitute, a taxi man phoned the woman and brought him to her south city suburban flat.

The accused paid her the €200 she asked and she told him to undress.

The woman alleges that the accused continued to have sex with her when she asked him to stop.

"He wasn’t listening to me," she said. "He just kept going. I was trying to get him off me but he was much heavier than me."

She agreed with Mr Grehan, in cross-examination, that "it never entered my head" to offer the accused his money back then.

The accused told gardaí: "I paid for sex and I got sex" and said he had no recollection of her asking him to stop. He denied he was rough with her and also denied her original anal rape allegation.

She also agreed with Mr Grehan that the accused’s English was not very good and that she had not explained to him that he had to wear a condom or what "he was going to get for the €200 fee" he paid her.

She said she had tried to talk to him and tell him but accepted that his English was not good enough to have this conversation. "I suppose he did not know because he can’t speak English."

She denied she told Garda Ronan Murphy that the taxi-driver who called her said he had "a foreigner" for her.

She said it was only after speaking for a few minutes to the accused when he arrived that she realised he was not Irish.

"I don’t like to do non-Irish," she said.