Rape trial jury hears that woman 'was left unaccompanied'

The jury in the trial of a Polish man accused of raping a woman in Galway as she walked home from her local pub in which they had both been drinking has heard that she asked had another customer to wait for her but he did not.

The customer was an off duty taxi driver and told the court that the alleged victim had returned from a trip to the toilet and said to him “will you wait, will you stay with me?”

He told her he was not staying and told the Central Criminal Court that he felt that he had let her down by not bringing her home.

A 41-year-old Polish man has pleaded not guilty to four charges of rape, sexual assault, assault causing harm to the woman and robbing €120 from her in a Galway town on May 9, 2007.

A bar man and customers from the pub gave evidence that the complaint and accused had been drinking in the pub and had both been in the toilets at the same time for around ten minutes or possibly more.

The bar man said the Polish man had entered the pub with a Polish couple with whom he played pool. The couple left the bar and the accused man stayed on and spoke to the woman for around 20 minutes. He bought a vodka and lemonade for her and a glass of Guinness for himself.

The witness told Roger Sweetman SC, prosecuting, that the accused man left the bar just before midnight and that the woman remained there for a further ten minutes. She tried to get a taxi but could not.

The bar man was asked by Martin Giblin SC, defending, if there had been “chat” or “banter” between the customers during a period of time when the accused and the woman were both in the toilets. He replied that he did not recall anything of that nature.

The woman earlier denied under cross examination by Mr Giblin that she had a “romantic encounter” with the man in the bathroom of the bar.

She also denied that she had been kissing and fondling the accused by putting her hand on his crotch outside his trousers, in another pub four nights earlier.

She agreed that she had a chat with the accused that Saturday night after he asked her for a cigarette. He had kissed her and put his hands down the inside of her underwear but she said she had told him to stop and called him “cheeky”.

She had earlier told Roger Sweetman SC, prosecuting, that on the Tuesday night the accused raped her and sexually assaulted her having dragged her into the carpark of the local community centre after she left the pub.

She said she noticed when she got home that €120 was missing from a zipped pocket in her jacket and that the accused had opened the zips on her coat during the attack.

She denied that when she left the pub it took her fifty minutes to walk to the community centre carpark, 50 meters away, because she had been kissing and cuddling the accused on the street.

She said the accused did not kiss her at all that night and it took them so long to walk a few meters because he was dragging her and she was struggling with him.

She agreed that she knew the accused lived in a flat above another pub but denied that it was her intention to go there with him that night and she had become embarrassed when she saw some locals standing outside that bar.

The complainant didn't accept that she had kissed and cuddled the accused in a common corridor between the ladies and gents bathrooms on the night of the alleged rape.

She admitted that other people in the bar had noticed that the pair were gone for 15 minutes and they assumed some “romantic exchange” had taken place.

The woman earlier said that the accused had forced his way into the cubicle while she was in the ladies, grabbed both her hands and said “please, please, five minutes of Polish music”. She managed to force him out of the way and bolt the door.

She agreed with Mr Giblin that she had not told the bar manager that “a lunatic had just tried to force his way in to the cubicle of the ladies” because she was nervous afterwards and she didn't want to make an issue of it.

She accepted that the gardai called to her two days after her statement to them to talk to her about the incident in the bathroom because customers in the pub had mentioned it to them.

She said she had been so traumatised by the whole incident that she forgot to tell gardaí about what had happened in the bathroom.

The woman denied that when she met the accused in the bar on the night of the alleged rape that she had kissed his hand after he had kissed her own.

She admitted that he had bought her drink after the incident in the bathroom but denied that she had bought him one during the course of the night. She said she had taken the drink from him because she didn't want to walk out of the pub alone after what had just happened.

She accepted that the CCTV footage showed a couple walking past at the time she claimed she was struggling with the accused but said she never asked them for help because the accused told her not to shout.

She didn't accept a suggestion from Mr Giblin that this was the first time she mentioned this and that she had never told this to the gardaí.

The complainant said that the accused had dragged her back past the pub she had been in minutes earlier but she didn't shout for help because the owner of the pub had just closed up and all the lights were going off.

The hearing continues before Mr Justice John Edwards and a jury of seven men and five women.