‘I have never seen hercy before. She’s very private'
Friends and taxi driver tell court of alleged rape victim’s tears
THE alleged victim may not have been in the court room, yet the friends she has known for more than half her life ensured her voice was still heard.
One by one they took to the stand at Laganside Crown Court in Belfast this week during the rape trial of Ireland and Ulster rugby players, Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding. And in polished Anglicised accents – with just the merest hint of a Northern Ireland inflection – the three young women gave the jury an insight into the alleged rape victim’s personality.
The women – who cannot be named for legal reasons – portrayed her as a composed, able, woman not given to emotional outbursts. That is, they said, until a nightout in June 2016 when her path crossed those of the two players and their friends Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison.
Friends at a loss what to do when woman broke down
Up until then, her friends testified, they had never seen the young woman break down or cry. So when she did, they were at a loss as to what to do. Their testimony was echoed by a taxi man who drove the ‘sobbing’ woman home that night.
The alleged victim – who was 19 at the time – claims she was raped by Mr Jackson and Mr Olding in Jackson’s bedroom. The two men deny these charges. Meanwhile, Mr McIlroy has pleaded not guilty to one count of exposure while Mr Harrison has denied perverting the court of justice.
The four young men stared straight ahead as the woman’s friends recalled how the now 21year-old behaved in the immediate aftermath of the alleged rape.
Describing the alleged victim’s demeanour when she arrived at her home to drive her to a health clinic, the friend said: ‘We’ve known each other since the age of 12. She immediately hugged me and started crying. I’ve seen her through family [things]… she keeps her composure… she will verbally explain how she’s feeling. I didn’t know how to respond to that, she hadn’t been emotional like that before.’
Later when a second friend was asked by Mr Jackson’s barrister, Brendan Kelly QC, as to whether the alleged victim would lie to the police, the young woman replied, without hesitation: ‘I would never have told my friend to lie, never.’
And when a third friend described meeting her for the first time since the alleged attack, she said: ‘We both looked at each other. I asked if she was okay and she burst into tears. She appeared emotionally very upset and looked physically unwell. I’d never seen her cry before. She is emotionally a very private person. She was very emotional and I’d never seen her like that before.’
According to the taxi driver who brought the woman home that night, she was crying and sobbing while Mr Harrison attempted to console her. In his evidence, Stephen Fisher said: ‘The young woman definitely seemed very upset. She was crying, sobbing throughout the journey. She did not really talk very much at all, bar telling me where she needed to go. The gentleman [Rory Harrison] in question was attempting to comfort the lady.
‘I believe I remember her head was placed on his chest. He was trying to comfort her.’
When questioned about a phone conversation that took place while Mr Harrison was in the car, the driver said: ‘To me, from what I heard, I would explain it as talking as sort of in code. I recall him saying to the person on the phone, “She is with me now. She is not good. I’ll call you in the morning”.’
Mr Fisher said the pair did not seem ‘overly intoxicated but there were signs of a good amount of drink taken that night’. He also said he noticed staining on the woman’s trousers. When he checked his car seats there were no signs of stains or marks. This lead him to believe that the stain had dried-in.
After dropping the young woman off, he drove Mr Harrison to another address. As they made their way there he asked the 25-year-old either ‘rough night?’ or ‘bad night?’
He claimed Mr Harrison’s response was: ‘You have no idea. You could say that.’ Mr Fisher took thats as a ‘sign not to ask more about it’. And when he was contacted by police he told the court that he knew the call from the PSNI had to do with the woman and man he had picked up on June 28, 2016.
Two days after the driver gave his evidence, police officers attached to the Rape Crime Unit told how Mr Harrison had given a slightly, but significantly, different version of that journey. He told police he had not noticed ‘anything out of the ordinary’ when he met the alleged victim outside Mr Jackson’s bedroom.
And that while she was upset in the taxi, he told police: ‘She kept crying into herself and appeared unsettled’, rather than how the driver had related the scene.
Describing the events that night, Mr Harrison told police officers that a number of females had gone back to Mr Jackson’s home with him and his three co- accused. He claimed the alleged victim was ‘staring and seemed to be fixated’ with Mr Jackson, and she had followed Mr Jackson upstairs five minutes after the accused had left the group to go to bed. Shortly afterwards, according to Mr Harrison’s account to the police, Stuart Olding and another girl left the sitting room the group had been partying in and then Blane McIlroy left alone.
By then, according to Mr Harrison, there were just him and three or so young women left. The women phoned for a taxi and before leaving the house he went upstairs ‘to say bye to the guys’. It was at this stage he met the alleged victim and he claimed: ‘She was standing outside the bedroom door and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Paddy was lying on his bed half-awake.’
However, as he waited with her for a taxi, Mr Harrison claimed she had, by then, become distressed. He told the police: ‘She appeared upset and quiet. She just sat there and didn’t respond.’ When they arrived at the woman’s home, Mr Harrison
‘She just sat there and didn’t respond’
walked her to her front door, gave her a hug and then left in the taxi.
In his interview with police, he said he and his three co-accused met the next day at a café where the topic of conversation was the South African tour Mr Jackson had just returned from. He insisted they had not discussed the previous evening. Previously, the jury heard that whatsapp messages were exchanged about the events between the group of friends the following day.
Earlier this week, a young woman, Dara Florence, who opened the door into Mr Jackson’s bedroom, insisted she is ‘a 100% certain’ the rugby player was having sex with a brown-haired woman from behind.
Another woman, Claire Matthews, described how she had been behind Ms Florence as she opened the door and Ms Florence had joked: ‘Oh my God, I’ve just seen a threesome’. That suggestion was rejected the next morning by Mr Jackson, according to Emily Docherty who stayed over because she was too drunk to make it home. Ms Docherty told the court that when she put it to Mr Jackson that he’d had a threesome, he shook his head and said, ‘No, nothing happened’.
The trial resumes on Tuesday.