Rape accused described sex worker as 'one of the lowest people you could meet'

 The young Kerry man accused of raping a sex worker from the same county described her as “one of the lowest people you could meet” when a detective questioned him about allegedly intimidating her via Snapchat.

The 27-year-old said, “I hope she suffers like she is making me suffer — what she is after doing — the allegations.”

 The accused was questioned about a drawing that appeared on Snapchat and he was asked to describe the drawing for the detective. 

The drawing, which was on top of a microwave oven in the defendant’s home, was then described by him for the garda: “It is a fella holding a head over his head. There is no in-depth meaning in it. It is a headless body hanging from a tree.” 

Asked who the body hanging on the tree represented, he said it represented the complainant.

 He referred to a cannonball in the drawing and was asked about a hole in the hanging body’s stomach. He replied, “It is a hole where the cannonball went through.” 

Asked about the word, ‘skank’ on the drawing he was asked what this meant and he said, “A slut but nasty on every side of it.” 

He denied that the figure holding the severed head represented himself.

The defendant said the Snapchat drawing was a ‘story’ rather than a communication to a particular person and could be accessed by anyone who knew him and was connected to him by Snapchat.

 He said of the drawing, “I can see how it would be intimidating for (complainant) but she was not meant to see it.” 

“Why put it on Snapchat?” he was asked and he replied, “I don’t know. I accept it was stupid.” He later said of the complainant, “She is not upset about it.” 

The detective put it to him that he sent this image and other words, such as, “I guess it takes a special kind of rape victim to want to stay close to her rapist,” in order to get her to withdraw her rape complaint. He denied this but he added, “I knew I would hear from the guards about it.” 

Asked what he was trying to do in the drawing and what it was about, the accused said, “Everything that is going on in my life  —  all the bullshit aimed at me — I was accused of rape.” 

At one point when the detective said of the complainant that “she is the victim,” the accused man responded by saying, “On paper, yeah.” 

The 27-year-old defendant denies that on September 25, 2017 he raped the 34-year-old woman vaginally and anally. He said they had consensual sex. He also denied organising prostitution and intimidation of a witness.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Michael White and a jury of six men and six women at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork.

Mr Justice White indicated to the jury that it might be Monday at noon before they would be sent out to deliberate and that this could continue into Tuesday, December 22.