Alleged rape victim ‘thought she’d die’

COURT: She says she feared she would die and now suffers flashbacks and is prescribed drugs for anxiety

A woman who has raised a civil legal action against a man cleared of raping her has told a court she thought she was going to die during the alleged attack.

“I was just so afraid,” the witness told a sheriff.

She also said she has suffered panics, flashbacks and night terrors, for which she has been prescribed a range of medication, in the wake of the alleged assault after a night out in St Andrews in 2013.

The 23-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she went on to became more reclusive and her drinking in an attempt to block out thoughts “spiralled out of control”.

Stephen Coxen, 23, from Bury in Lancashire, is being sued by the woman who accuses him of raping her.

Coxen denied the charges and in November 2015 a jury found the case against him not proven, a verdict of acquittal.

His alleged victim has launched a civil action, and began her evidence at the Personal Injury Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday.

Simon Di Rollo QC, for the woman, asked her yesterday about an earlier statement she had made in which she said she “thought that was it” during the alleged attack.

Pressed to explain what she had meant by the phrase, she replied: “I thought I was going to die.”

She listed a variety of drugs she said she has been prescribed, including those to help with anxiety and depression.

On Tuesday, the woman described waking up to find a stranger having sex with her after a night out.

The court heard that she had been drinking alcohol earlier in the night, but her memory was blank for parts of the evening.

Questioned yesterday by Stephen O’Rourke QC for Coxen, who contests the action, she agreed that she had consumed significantly more alcohol that night than she would have been used to.

Asked whether she might have “overstated” the amount she had consumed, she replied: “I disagree with that.”

The witness said people in St Andrews think it is a safe town in which someone can go home from a night out on their own until “some monster takes advantage of that”.

Mr O’Rourke put it to her that she and the defender had consensual intercourse after meeting. The woman said she would not have been upset or alarmed if that were the case.

“Clearly, from my evidence, I was very distressed,” she said. “I wouldn’t have feared for my life, I wouldn’t have had to have surgery on my tongue.

“All these things wouldn’t have happened if that was the case, what you just said.”

The action, understood to be the first of its kind in Scotland, continues.

People in St Andrews think it is a safe town in which someone can go home from a night out on their own until some monster takes advantage of that.

WOMAN, 23

Stephen Coxen, 23, from Bury in Lancashire, is being sued by a woman who accuses him of raping her in St Andrews in 2013. At his trial for rape in 2015 a jury found the case against him not proven.