Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
TRIAL CLAIM ‘There was no rape’
Complainant’s evidence ‘unreliable’ and police probe flawed, jury told
THE barrister for a rugby player accused of orally raping a student told a jury yesterday: “There was no rape. There was consent.”
Frank O’donoghue QC said in his closing speech the evidence produced by police and the prosecution “did not even come close to proving the guilt” of his client Stuart Olding.
He added: “It does not come remotely near the required standard to render you sure Stuart Olding orally raped the complainant in June 2016.
“A person is only to be deprived of their liberty if it is proved to the jury that they have committed a crime.
“Proof is not as a result of a whim, or an impression, a gut feeling or even an instinct, but as a result of listening to the evidence.
“If, on the evidence, you cannot be sure, then it is your duty to acquit. We, the court, the jury, must never be party to any miscarriage of justice. We must avoid that at all costs.”
The barrister said police let down Olding, 25, during their investigation into claims he raped a then 19-yearold woman at house party in fellow Ireland and Ulster star Paddy Jackson’s South Belfast home.
Mr O’donoghue said the jury were being asked to decide on the fate of his client’s guilt or innocence when the complainant had already confirmed she had no idea how she came to be involved in the oral sex. The court heard how the police had asked her in her first ABE interview: “Do you know how that came to be there?”
She had replied: “I am not entirely sure to be honest.”
In her second interview, when asked the same question, the court heard she had replied: “I am really sure my head was forced down.”
Mr O’donoghue told the jury the complainant had developed “false memories” and added: “She describes assumptions as memories because she wants to be believed.”
He added her police statements were “devoid of detail” and he accused the PSNI of never truly understanding or studying what exactly was being said to them.
He said: “The testing of her evidence was at best poor and at worst virtually non-existent.
“There is no detail – just her word.” Mr O’donoghue said detectives from the rape crime unit who worked the case should have asked the complainant more questions in their two interviews and should have sought a third.
He said: “When the police got layer upon layer of evidence from Mr Olding that indicated consent they should have reinterviewed the complainant.”
And he added that they should have added numerous questions to their investigation, adding: “Why did she open her mouth? Why didn’t she close her mouth? Why didn’t she scream?
“There were three middle-class girls downstairs who wouldn’t tolerate rape. How was [oral sex] actually being performed if her head was constantly being pushed down?
“What position was she in when the act commenced? How long did it go on for? How did it come to an end?
“What caused the oral sex to cease? Because she stopped it – or because Olding wanted it to stop? What did Stuart Olding do and where did he go? How did she get on to her back when she was down on her knees?”
He earlier told the court Olding had stated his case from the start and had not wavered from his version of events before or after he knew what the complainant and his co-accused had told police.
Mr O’donoghue said: “Mr Olding has made the case that the act was entirely consensual, that he never pulled her head.
“The proof of the fact that it was consensual can be taken from the body positions that they adopted, the duration of the act, the fact that she interrupted the act before recommencing, that she brought him to the point of ejaculation and he told her he was going to ejaculate.”
The barrister urged the jury of eight men and three women to “study the evidence” in order to “root out” inconsistencies. And he told them: “Do not judge the book by its cover. Do not assume that because an account appears plausible it must therefore be true.
“When you consider all the evidence, it doesn’t come remotely near the required standard to render you sure [Olding] is guilty of oral rape.”
“When you peel back all the evidence, you’re just left with the complainant’s word.
“There is no issue that oral sex took place. Consent is the issue.”
In his closing submission, Mr O’donoghue said the burden of proof lay with the prosecution.
Olding, 25, from Ardenlee Street in Belfast, denies raping a woman at a house party in June 2016. Team-mate, Paddy Jackson, 26, from Oakleigh Park in the city, also denies rape and sexual assault.
Blane Mcilory, 26, from Royal Lodge Road, Belfast, denies exposure, while Rory Harrison, 25, from Manse Road, Belfast, denies perverting the course of justice and withholding information.
Mr O’donoghue asked the jury to remember Olding had said the oral sex he had had performed on him by the complainant had been “completely consensual”.
And the barrister added that the prosecution’s position that Olding pulled the woman’s head to him and applied pressure to her head, making
her choke and gag, was not fact. Mr O’donoghue said: “Perhaps it was a consensual act she came to regret.
“The crime can’t be made out in the evidence of this case”
The barrister spoke of evidence given by Dr Phillip Lavery who examined the complainant after she claimed to a friend she had been raped.
Mr O’donoghue said: “[Her] evidence has been shown to be completely unreliable.”
He described the complainant’s claim of oral rape by Olding as “belated” and “unreliable” and said, while she told Dr Lavery at the Rowan Clinic she had been vaginally raped by two men, she gave police a different account.
The barrister advised the jury: “[She] made false allegations in order to be believed. She deliberately concealed the fact that she performed oral sex on a male so that she wouldn’t be orally forensically examined at the Rowan where she made her ludicrous claim.
“You have to second guess everything in this case before you rely on it.”
Mr O’donoghue told the jury that despite having 20 alcoholic drinks before the alleged incident, Olding had co-operated fully with police.
He said: “He answered all their questions without hesitation. And when his account was contradicted he stood his ground and explained fully what happened.
“Stuart Olding’s answers to police go so much further than raise a reasonable doubt. He proves his innocence. You can place a lot of store in what he said.
“His account that his hands were by his side, not on [the woman’s] head, was supported by Dara Florence’s account. When he went into the bedroom, he saw Mr Jackson on his back and the complainant on top of him, that too was supported by the complainant’s evidence. His account the complainant took her own top off was supported by her own evidence.
“That she asked for a condom is supported by the complainant. Stuart Olding told it as it was. He told it warts and all.”
And he described Olding’s Whatsapp messages to his friends as his client of “acting the big lad”, and “bragging in the privacy of his own phone”.
Mr O’donogue said: “The social media texts are nothing but a titillating sideshow [with] no evidential value in relation to Olding in this case.”
The barrister described the complainant’s account as being “corrupted by unreliability” and told
them being a credible witness and a reliable witness are two different things. He said: “The sad reality is her story is utterly and undeniably unreliable. She exaggerated to attract sympathy or blatantly lied.
“There was no rape. There was consent – perhaps a matter of regret now, to all parties.”
Mr O’donoghue urged jurors to acquit his client of what he described as an “unsustainable charge”. In his closing message, he told them: “Stuart Olding welcomes the fact that you will decide his fate. Finally someone will listen to him and decide he has told the truth, warts and all.”
The trial continues.