I didn’t want to worry Paddy about rape text
RUGBY RAPE TRIAL Special Saturday sitting
A MAN accused of covering up an alleged rape gave evidence yesterday at a special sitting of Belfast Crown Court about a lunch the day after the incident.
Rory Harrison said that at the lunch he did not tell his friend, Ulster and Ireland rugby player Paddy Jackson, about a text he received from the alleged victim in which she said what had happened was ‘non-consensual’.
He said that he had chose not to mention it because he didn’t believe the woman’s text and did not want to worry Mr Jackson, the jury heard.
Mr Harrison, who is accused of covering up the alleged rape by Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding, told the court the three of them met with the fourth accused, Blane McIlroy, at Soul Food for lunch the day after the party in Mr Jackson’s house.
‘Why would I tell him? I didn’t believe it’
He said he didn’t tell Mr Jackson ‘because I didn’t believe it and I did not want to worry him about something that I had no faith was true’.
When asked if he had told Mr Olding about the message, he responded: ‘Why would I?’
Mr Harrison, 25, has denied perverting the course of justice and withholding information relating to the alleged incident on June 28, 2016.
He described Soul Food as a small restaurant, with closely arranged tables – not a place to have a private conversation. He said there was no conversation about the complainant or her text message saying ‘what happened was non-consensual’. When asked by counsel where the men would have held a ‘secretive conversation’, he answered ‘Patrick’s house’.
Mr Harrison met his co-defendants later that day at the Two Taps bar and said the previous night’s alleged sexual activity was not discussed.
The following day, Mr Harrison went to Filthy McNasty’s pub to meet Mr Jackson and Mr Olding. ‘We had a fair amount to drink,’ he said, adding that they went on to a nightclub and then a house party.
On June 30, Mr Harrison’s birthday, the three men went for brunch in Town Square, where Mr Jackson and Mr Olding both received phone calls from Ulster Rugby, informing them the PSNI were at Kingspan rugby stadium.
‘They looked pretty shocked and surprised as the call went on,’ he said. Mr Harrison said it did not occur to any of them that the reason the police wanted to speak to them might be related to the complainant. ‘We thought it might have been something to do with the night before,’ he said.
After returning home and having a nap, he was woken by his sister who told him the police were downstairs. He told counsel that his father is a solicitor but said he didn’t speak to him about the situation before going to the police station.
The jury were read a text sent by Mr Harrison to Mr McIlroy that day, saying his dad was ‘saying it could get thrown out. Said it was very significant that yer one followed Jacko up the stairs’.
He said he told Mr McIlroy to leave his phone at home because he was aware police seize phones and this is ‘very inconvenient’. He said that messages and data were deleted from his phone because he had to reset it after it ‘got caught in a loop’ and malfunctioned. He denied deliberately wiping material from it.
‘My phone was f ***** ,’ he texted a friend. ‘This is a sad day, I feel like I’ve lost my first-born child.’
Mr Harrison said a message he sent saying ‘walked upstairs and there were more flutes than the 12th of July’ was a reference to Mr Jackson’s sexual activity with the complainant and Mr Olding’s with another woman. He told the court he had not seen a rape happen, he did not believe a rape had happened and that there had been no attempt to cover up or to concoct a story about what had happened.
He said his initial reaction upon receiving the complainant’s text was shock. ‘But the more I thought about it, Patrick Jackson is the last person in the world who would rape someone. I thought maybe that she’d done something and regretted it,’ he said. On the night of the alleged rape, Mr Harrison said he saw the woman staring at Mr Jackson ‘a bit longer than most people would, considering we were in his house and she knew he was there’.
After about an hour he saw Mr Jackson going upstairs and the complainant following him. He then
‘Paddy is the last person who would rape’
decided to go home and went upstairs to say goodbye to Mr Jackson. He told the court he walked past the alleged victim at the top of the stairs. ‘She was just standing there. She wasn’t unclothed or I would have noticed,’ he said.
He said Mr Jackson was in bed, naked, with the covers only over his lower legs. Mr Harrison told the jury that when he put his head into another bedroom he saw Mr Olding and a woman asleep, fully clothed.
He said he thought it was possible they had some sexual activity.
He then went back downstairs, where he noticed the complainant ‘seemed a bit quiet’ and offered to bring her home. As they walked to a garage to get a taxi, he said the woman was ‘a bit more upset at this stage, crying’. He denied speaking in code to Mr McIlroy when on the phone to him in the taxi.
After walking her up her driveway he sent a text saying: ‘Keep your chin up, you wonderful young woman.’
He told Mr Duffy that he had ‘absolutely no idea’ why the woman was upset but said it might have been because she had been rejected by Mr Jackson. He said he sent the complainant some music to ‘listen to as she fell asleep’.
He will be cross examined tomorrow (Monday) when the trial continues before Judge Patricia Smyth.
Mr Jackson, 26, of Oakleigh Park, Belfast has pleaded not guilty to rape and sexual assault at a party in his house on June 28, 2016.
Mr Olding, 24, of Ardenlee Street, Belfast, denies one count of rape on the same occasion. Both men contend the activity was consensual.
Blane McIlroy, 26, of Royal Lodge Road, Ballydollaghan, Belfast, has pleaded not guilty to one count of exposure, while Rory Harrison, 25, from Manse Road, Belfast, has pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice and withholding information relating to the incident.
‘Keep your chin up you wonderful young woman’