Rape accused claims pregnant woman initiated sex

An English man accused of raping his pregnant ex-partner in her Co Clare home has told a jury that it was her idea to have sex that night and they made love because he did not want to hurt her feelings by rejecting her.

The accused told Mr John Phelan SC, defending, that he had hit the woman twice but denied that he struck her with a gun as the complainant had earlier testified.

He suggested that she sustained her injuries, two chipped teeth and a black eye, after she fell onto the gun having fallen from him striking her.

The 44-year-old man has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to three counts of rape, two counts of anal rape and one count each of oral rape, false imprisonment, threatening to kill by shooting, threatening to disfigure with a knife, aggravated burglary and possessing a shotgun with intent to endanger life.

The accused pleaded guilty in December 2008 to assaulting the woman but denies hitting her with the gun. All the offences are alleged to have occurred at her Clare home on September 9, 2007.

The accused said that the complainant’s allegations that he had raped her were “absolutely untrue” and described her testimony as “flat out malicious lies”.

He said sometime later in the night, after he had gone to her home and assaulted her, the complainant came into the bedroom wearing pink lingerie. She stood in front of him, put her baby bump against his forehead and massaged his shoulders.

“She then pulled my hands around her so my hands were on her bum. She laughed and asked me how I was feeling now. I told her I was horny,” the accused told the jury before he said they cuddled, kissed and “made love”.

When asked by Mr Phelan if it was his evidence to the jury that the sex had been by consent, the accused replied: “Yes definitely if anything it had been her idea.”

“I was extremely depressed at the time and did not feel like sex. I did not want to hurt her feelings by saying no. I had only just broken her teeth,” the accused said.

He then said to Mr Phelan that he was ashamed of himself for having hit the woman. He noticed that she had two chipped teeth and said at first he could not believe it.

The accused told the jury that the complainant later told him not to worry about her broken teeth and told him that it was her fault.

“She told me that she had asked for it. She also said the fact that I had tried to kill myself and the fact I had just hit her proved to her that I really loved her”, the man said.

He said she had told him that she had been intentionally trying to drive him mad for months and that it was all her fault.

He told Mr Phelan that he had planned to shoot himself earlier that night after taking his cousin’s gun but decided that he would call instead to the complainant’s house and tell her how he was feeling in the hope that it would make him feel better.

The accused told the jury that he had previously “rescued” the complainant when she had threatened to kill herself.

He put the gun into the back of his cousin’s car and drove it to the woman’s house. He parked the car some distance away, walked through a field and gained entry to the house through a kitchen window.

He found the complainant lying back on her bed, fully clothed and clutching her phone. He described her as being semiconscious and said he did not know if she was drunk or half asleep.

She sat up and he told her that he loved her and he could not live in the world without her “not another day”.

The accused told the jury that the complainant replied that she was glad that he had come to her and he told her that he had almost killed himself before holding the gun in his mouth to demonstrate to her how he had been planning on committing suicide.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Carney and a jury of seven women and four men.