Hotel guest charged with raping tourist

A hotel guest has been charged with raping a tourist staying in the room next door.

Mark Wade Hopkins, a 50year-old American national, was remanded in custody after he was arraigned yesterday.

The incident took place on Saturday night at a St Paul’s Bay hotel.

Giving testimony, one of victim’s friends said they were out partying at a club and the accused was there too.

“We all got drunk,” the court was told.

The alleged victim testified via video conference, saying they first drank wine but that she later had a few shots of Bacardi and a couple of other drinks.

Returning to their hotel, her friends went down to buy cigarettes and the guest next door came to her room.

She ended up in his room where he pushed her onto the bed. He pulled up her clothes and touched her intimately, even though she told him to stop, she said.

Her friends testified that when they returned to their room they did not find their friend there, so they knocked on “Mark’s door”.

“But there was no sound,” one of the women recalled.

A few minutes later, their friend entered the room.

“She wasn’t acting strange. She was fine,” recalled the same witness.

But soon after her friends made some kind of joke, she collapsed onto the floor, her body seemingly “blocked”, and told her friends she had been raped.

“They seemed very friendly... It was all perfectly quiet and no sound was heard from the room next door

Before going downstairs for a cigarette, one of her friends had seen the accused outside the victim’s room, talking to her.

“They seemed friendly,” she said.

Asked by the accused’s legal aid lawyer, the witness confirmed that it was all “perfectly quiet” and no sound was heard from the room next door when they knocked.

Magistrate Elaine Mercieca turned down a request for bail. very