Alleged rape victim was ‘up for it’ with footballer and his friend, says defence

A LAW student who claimed she was raped by Ireland and Arsenal footballer Graham Stack had consensual sex with him while his girlfriend was in the next room, a court heard yesterday.

The 22-year-old was “up for it” after meeting goalkeeper Stack, who is currently on loan to Reading, and his friend at a West End club, Croydon Crown Court was told.

After a “kiss and a cuddle” with Alan Smillie at Stack’s Beckenham flat in the early hours of September 1, last year, she initiated sex with the player, the jury was told.

Defence counsel Linda Strudwick, for Stack, said: “You started touching him... stroking his thighs, you undid the button on his jeans.

“Mr Stack pulled the duvet up so there would be a little bit of privacy.

“You were, you having instigated sex, both being sexual towards one another.

“You were being, not out of it but very much part of it.”

The barrister continued: “You deliberately set out to see if you could get him to respond to you.”

The south London hearing was told that Stack, who had a fiancee at the time, stopped having sex with the woman after 20 seconds to a minute when his girlfriend called out his name.

“You had been used sexually, as you saw it, and you had been tossed aside because Graham Stack preferred X”, Ms Strudwick said.

“Mr Stack, we suggest, had short sex with you and that he should not have done because he was with X that night, and that he should not have done because he had a fiancee. That’s very bad behaviour.”

But she said it was for the jury to decide whether what had taken place was consensual sex or rape.

Stack denies one count of rape and one count of sexual assault.

Smillie, an operations manager from Boundaries Road, Feltham, west London pleaded not guilty earlier to two counts of sexual assault.

The woman, from north London, earlier told the court she had “absolutely no energy to resist in any way” when Stack allegedly attacked her and Smillie allegedly sexually assaulted her while she was trying to sleep.

Earlier, the court heard from Smillie’s defence counsel, Edward Henry, who said: “I’m not trying to be vulgar but you weren’t out of it, you were up for it.”

“No, absolutely not,” she replied.