Rape accused claims he cannot have sex, court hears

A Limerick taxi driver who is accused of raping a passenger told gardaí that he had a medical condition which meant that he could not have sex.

The man told gardaí in interview that the 21-year-old complainant had started cursing when he told her he could not give her a receipt for the €15 fare. He said she grabbed the till machine from the car and told him: “I’ll get you in trouble for this. You’ll see this won’t be the last you see of me.”

The accused said that the girl had been trying to take a photo of him on her phone earlier in the journey and he kept telling her to stop because he was trying to drive. When he dropped her at her destination she again tried to take a picture, so he grabbed her phone and switched it off before handing it back to her.

The 43-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to two counts of rape and sexual assault after picking the woman up in his cab a short distance from a nightclub in the early hours of October 17, 2007.

Mr Thomas Creed SC, prosecuting, read from a memo of the taxi driver’s interview with gardaí, that the accused claimed that he had told another taxi driver about this encounter with the woman and described her “as a real lunatic”.

This man advised him to contact the gardaí and the accused claimed that he had told one garda after he flashed him for crossing over a white line while he was carrying another passenger that same evening.

When asked by gardaí why he had not called into a garda station or phoned the station to report the incident he replied that he had a passenger with him and he did not think it was too important.

Mr Creed said that the accused described the complainant’s allegations as “all lies” when they were put to him by gardaí and claimed that he “never laid a hand on her”.

He said he had a medical condition that meant he could not have sex and said he had trouble having sex with his wife.

The accused also commented to gardaí: “The sickening thing is I was nice to her”.

In a second interview with gardaí the accused told them that he did not know where the complainant’s belt was as she claimed that he had taken it off her and she couldn’t find it after the alleged rape.

He accepted that the woman was the last female passenger he had in his taxi that night.

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