Alleged rape victim denies being 'caught out' by phone records

The Galway woman who alleges she was raped by a Czech national has denied defence claims that she had been "caught-out" in her evidence through mobile phone records and timings on CCTV footage.

The woman claimed she had "pressed redial" on her phone "several times" during the alleged rape at her car at about 1.30am and defence counsel, Mr Diarmaid McGuinness SC (with Mr Francis Comerford BL), put it to her that phone records showed no calls were made at all on her phone from before 1.30 until 1.45am.

She agreed with Mr McGuinness that the CCTV footage showed her and the accused on the street in an apparent embrace at 1.30am and, in counsel's words "willingly walking towards a door" before going off-camera, with the next siting being the accused walking back along the street on his own at 1.47am.

Mr McGuinness noted that the accused told gardaí they went towards her car and had consensual sexual intercourse beside it and that he stopped and withdrew from her after she said "wait" before he left her when she began crying and wouldn't give him an explanation.

The 24-year-old complainant agreed with Mr McGuinness that the 1.47am siting of the accused was him walking back the way they had come and that the phone records showed she tried to make calls at 1.45 and 1.46am to a male friend.

Mr McGuinness suggested that the phone and CCTV evidence were consistent with the accused's story to the gardaí the next day about how he claimed to have sex with her and how it ended and that she was "caught-out" in her claims.

"I know I tried to use my phone while he raped me by pressing the redial button several times," she replied.

Mr McGuinness put it to her that since she had agreed and it was also shown on the phone records obtained by the gardaí that she had tried to call a female friend before meeting the accused on the street, this woman's number would show in the records for the time from 1.30 to 1.45am if she pressed redial.

She rejected Mr McGuinness's suggestion that she had been "caught-out" having either "deliberately made a false allegation or garbled the whole thing up in your recollection".

The 23-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty to raping and sexually assaulting the woman on or about July 28, 2007 in County Galway. It was day-three of the trial.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of eight men and four women.