Gardaí told rape-accused video showed him pouring drink into alleged victim's mouth

Gardaí told a man accused of raping a student in Donegal that mobile phone video footage shows him pouring drink into her mouth and laughing as she staggered around his apartment.

The defendant (33) and a co-accused (29), both Donegal residents, have both pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape of the woman in a town in the county in February 2015. The complainant is now aged in her 20s.

After some days of legal argument, evidence has resumed in the trial at the Central Criminal Court.

In DVD footage of the garda interview of the older accused, played to jurors, the man told gardaí that he met the two women in a local nightclub.

He said they asked for a party and agreed to go to his apartment with him and his male friend.

He said that in the apartment the complainant and her friend asked for a drink and he opened a bottle of vodka. He said the women poured their own drinks but did not finish them.

He said they asked to sleep and he showed them a bedroom. He said they were “a bit tipsy” and he helped them to the bedroom and left them there.

He said the complainant later walked to the bathroom and back to the bedroom. He said in the bedroom the two women lay on a bed and he lay down beside the complainant.

He said they began kissing her and she told him she liked him. He said he asked “are you ok [to] have sex” and she said yes.

He told gardaí she said she was “too horny” and said “I should fuck her”. He said during the sex she was repeatedly screaming “fuck me hard, don't stop”.

“I swear as God is my witness, I did not rape [her],” he said.

Asked if she was sober enough to say no, he told gardaí “she wasn't drunk”. Asked if “before having sex did you ever think she might be too drunk to consent?", he said no.

He said she didn't appear to be drunk or act drunk.

Gardaí then played mobile phone footage recorded by the complainant's friend at the apartment. The footage was previously viewed by the jury. Gardaí put it to the defendant that the footage shows him bringing a glass up to the mouth of the complainant.

You are turning the glass for her to drink. Your hand is helping her to drink, the glass is raised long enough for her to drink. You poured the drink into her mouth.

The accused said he was taking the glass away because she was going to drop it and spill it: “I'm not forcing someone to drink. I cannot lie, I have two kids, I love my sons, I swear on their life."

"I swear this girl told me I should fuck her,” he said. He repeated that he did not force her to drink.

Gardaí told him “she was too drunk to even resist. You poured it into her mouth”. He told them he did think she was capable of holding the glass on her own.

In another video clip, gardaí said that the complainant is seen “locked” drunk and cannot stand and is held up by the accused and another man. The woman's friend is heard whispering, “we are in a really bad position”.

The man said he doesn't know why she said this.

“Could it be that two men are carrying her friend, who is paralytic drunk, into a bedroom and telling her to relax, lie down,” gardaí asked.

The defendants said if he and the other man had intended “to do anything bad” they would have stopped the video recording.

Another clip, gardaí said, shows the accused lifting the complainant off the floor and laughing while watching her stagger around.

The man said that when the woman allowed him to have sex with her “she wasn't drunk like we see on the video”.

Asked if he knew that rape included having sex with someone who is too drunk to be able to say yes or no or to give consent, the defendant replied: “I don't know, unless you tell me now”.

The defendants cannot be named for legal reasons. The trial continues in evidence before Justice Alex Owens and the jury.

'If she was too drunk, how would she know that I had sex with her?'

Gardaí put it to the defendant, during a number of interviews, that he intentionally got the complainant intoxicated.

“She was too intoxicated to give consent or resist and you carried her to your room. She was so intoxicated she couldn't walk. You had sex regardless, without worrying if she could consent or not, you didn't care.”

He replied: “I love my kids, I swear on my kids life I did not force this girl, I'm not lying to you, I would not lie”.

Gardaí put it to him that he didn't have to force her because she was so drunk.

He replied: “That was before, if I forced this girl, oh my God, why, why, I didn't. She was the one who approached me, I swear on my children's life. I didn't force her”.

Asked if he knew the meaning of rape, he said: “if you force someone it's rape”.

Gardaí asked “what if she was too drunk to know to say yes or no,” and the man replied, “if she was too drunk, how would she know that I had sex with her?”

Colman Fitzgerald SC, defending, put it to the garda witness, who was present for the interviews, that it was only at the end of the third interview that gardaí ascertained whether his client understood what rape was.

In another interview, the man again told gardaí that the complainant was screaming “fuck me, don't stop” and said that they should ask the other woman.

“Her friend will tell you the truth,” he said.