Man accused of raping woman beside sleeping boyfriend
A man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court accused of raping a woman in a Tipperary hotel as her boyfriend slept beside her.
The 27-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty to the rape of the woman on July 7, 2008 after she had attended a wedding there.
Prosecuting counsel, Mr Eanna Mulloy SC, said it was the State’s case that the 34-year-old woman initially thought the accused was her boyfriend but realised it was someone else when she felt her partner moving beside her.
Her boyfriend woke up and threw the accused from the bed, hit him and then ejected him from the room.
Mr Mulloy opened the case to the jury and told them they would hear evidence that the woman was attending a wedding in the hotel with her boyfriend and two brothers.
He said the festivities went into the early hours of the morning and as the woman and her friend were walking around the hotel at 6am they met the accused and chatted with him.
He said the accused was locked out of his room and a suggestion was made that he could use a spare bed in the room the woman's brothers were staying in. This was connected to the room she shared with her boyfriend.
They went back to the room but could not open it. Mr Mulloy said there would be phone records showing the woman tried twice to ring her boyfriend to get him to open the door.
Eventually a night porter let them in. The woman claims she told the accused to sleep in the adjourning room while she went to her partner's bed.
Mr Mulloy said she went in and went to sleep but was awoken by someone performing oral sex on her.
He said she would testify that she assumed it was her boyfriend and when he started to have sex with her she reciprocated.
Mr Mulloy said the woman then felt her boyfriend moving in the bed beside her and she realised the man on top of her was someone else.
Her boyfriend woke up and became aggressive, throwing the naked accused onto the floor and hitting him before throwing him out of the room into the corridor.
The woman then told him he had raped her and her boyfriend said he was going to go kill him. He went outside where the accused had been met by two hotel staff and given a towel to cover himself.
Mr Mulloy said the jury would heard that the boyfriend hit the accused two more times before going back into his room. The gardaí were called and all the parties were interviewed.
Mr Mulloy said he will present evidence that the accused told gardaí the woman had been awake at all times and that he did not see anyone else in the room at the time.
“She was relaxed about it, she seemed to be enjoying it,” the accused told gardaí. When gardaí asked him why the woman would have sex with him with her boyfriend in the same bed, he replied: “I know, it's mad isn't it?”
The trial continues before Mr Justice John Edwards and a jury of seven men and five women.
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