Rape accused says girl did not indicate a lack of consent

A TEENAGER accused of raping a schoolmate when they were both 16 has told a court the girl gave no ‘verbal or physical’ indication that she didn’t want sexual activity.

The youth also maintained that the atmosphere between himself and the girl as they walked back from the scene of the alleged offences was ‘romantic’.

The accused, now aged 19, has denied one count of rape and another of oral rape of the girl outside a building in a town in Co. Donegal in the early hours of March 18, 2016. On the eighth day of his trial at the Central Criminal Court yesterday, the accused gave his account of meeting the girl after they had been drinking separately with friends on the evening of St Patrick’s Day.

The youth told Michael O’Higgins SC, defending: ‘I was tipsy but I wouldn’t definitely say I was drunk’, adding that the girl agreed when he suggested that they go for a walk.

‘We were both in good form, flirting,’ he said. The accused told his counsel that they went behind a building and started kissing and that at one point, the girl’s head banged against the wall behind her.

He said he pressed ‘very lightly’ on her shoulders to demonstrate that he wanted oral sex and denied that she gave any indication she didn’t want it to happen.

He rejected suggestions that the girl told him a number of times that she didn’t want to have oral sex.

He also rejected a suggestion that he had kicked her legs apart and pushed her upper body forward, causing her to bang her head off the wall, and raped her, despite her asking him to stop five or six times.

The accused said he could not account for the multiple bruises and abrasions that were recorded by a forensic nurse on the girl’s body three days later, apart from one cut on her head which he said happened when she banged her head while they were kissing.

The trial resumes on Monday before Judge Deirdre Murphy.