The Irish Mail on Sunday

I BEGGED HIM TO STOP BUT HE GRABBED MY THROAT AND I FROZE

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*Ciara, from Kildare, was 25 and had just broken up with her boyfriend when she thought she would try online dating. She never reported the alleged rape to gardaí as she felt shamed ‘I FELT lonely. My friends had met guys that night and I was all on my own – heartbroke­n. So I texted this guy I’d been messaging on the dating site all week.

‘I loved his photo. He was muscular and worked out a lot. He was like my ex but better looking, so I thought, “Why not have some fun?”

‘He asked me round to his and I can’t believe I did this but I felt like cr**. I got his address and jumped in a cab.

‘He was at the door of his house when I got there. As I got nearer, I realised he looked nothing like his profile photo.

‘I felt uneasy and disappoint­ed but I went inside. He had recently lost his mother and he had been single for years, unable to meet a “nice girl”.

‘I started to feel like he was really lost and down and I stayed on to chat longer than I should have. We had some drink and that was the last thing I needed.

‘Things moved on. They shouldn’t have but I felt sorry for him and I felt so down about my ex. I just let him kiss me.

‘Before I knew it we were having sex and I was regretting it. I asked him to stop.

‘I explained I was sorry but I had just been in a break-up and I was vulnerable and drunk. He refused to stop. He kept having sex with me and by this time I was begging him to stop.

‘He didn’t. He raised his voice and told me to “stop talking”, that he was “nearly done”.

‘I couldn’t believe it. He was raping me now because I’d told him to stop and he was just telling me to stop talking, to continue letting him do what he was doing to my body.

‘I was angry, terrified, a lot of emotions at once – but then as I tried to move from under him he put his hand on my throat and I froze.

‘He seemed to get more aggressive as he continued to rape me.

‘I was numb. I cried. He eventually stopped and, shaking, I grabbed my clothes and walked downstairs.’

He followed her to the living room, where she was calling a taxi on her phone.

‘He told me I was “sh**” and called me a “whore”. He said so many things, then he ordered me out of his house.

‘I just left, too afraid to answer him. I called a cab in the street. Ciara did not report the man to the gardaí.

‘I was afraid it would get back to my family if it went to court and I knew I shouldn’t have gone to his house.

‘But I do know it wasn’t my fault. At least by talking now and telling what happened to me, others might read this and not make the same awful decisions.

‘I would say to stay away from online dating because you just don’t know who is on the other end of the computer or

phone.’ A version of this interview first appeared on irelandtod­aynews. com *name has been changed

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