Woman says ex-partner raped her after hitting her

A woman has denied before a Central Criminal Court jury that she made love to her ex-partner after he hit her and added: "I can categorically 100% say it was not love. It was rape."

She said that the 43-year-old accused had announced that he was going to rape her before he did so and she was surprised he had said that because minutes earlier he had declared his love for her.

She didn’t accept a suggestion from Mr John Phelan SC (with Mr Michael Bowman BL), defending, that the accused had a gun with him that night because he was intending to shoot himself.

She also didn’t accept that she started to row with her ex-partner when she woke up to find him in her room.

"He had a gun with him and I was not going to argue with him," she said.

The accused has pleaded not guilty to seven charges arising out of the alleged incident in the complainant’s Clare home on September 9, 2007.

He denies three charges of rape, anal rape and oral rape of a woman, one charge each of falsely imprisoning and threatening to kill her, aggravated burglary using a single-action shotgun and unlawful possession of a firearm, all on the same occasion.

He has pleaded guilty to one charge of assaulting the woman on the same occasion, causing her harm.

The complainant told Mr Phelan that the accused was "lying" if he had instructed him that he had never said he was going to rape her.

She said she did not accept that the accused statement to her that he could not "live in a world without her" was a declaration of love.

"It was a declaration of something but it was not love," the complainant said and didn’t accept a further suggestion that it was something one would hear in a romantic movie.

"It may be something you would hear in such a movie but not after a woman had just been hit in the face. That’s a different kind of movie," she replied.

Mr Phelan told her that his client accepted he had hit her and said he was very upset by that.

She said the accused was also lying if he had told his counsel that he had not touched her in the face with the gun.

The complainant agreed that she had a cigarette with the accused that night. "I asked him for a cigarette because I was shaking. It was a break from his anger and it was a connection between us to share a cigarette," she said.

She said that during the rape she had thought about trying to escape by poking the accused in the eye with a set of keys on the bed but she realised to get out she would have to jump out of a window when it was pitch black outside.

She told the jury that she realised she would most probably be injured from the fall and get caught again by the accused.

The hearing continues before Mr Justice Barry White and the jury of five women and seven men.