A 35-year-old English man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with raping a woman in Bandon, Co Cork.
The accused denies raping the 28-year-old and has also pleaded not guilty to threatening to kill or cause serious harm to her on the same occasion on January 22nd and 23rd, 2002. Mr Paul Coffey SC, prosecuting, told the jury the accused had pleaded guilty to a charge of assault causing harm to the woman.
He said that a week prior to the alleged offence the two had met as she chatted with others outside a homeless hostel in Cork city. He approached her again later that week and she went for a drink with him in a pub.
Mr Coffey said they went back to his caravan and spent some time together.
On Tuesday, January 22nd, he said their relationship which had been uneasy before that "became particularly so then". He said the accused wanted to take the woman back to the hostel where she had been staying to get her clothes. She refused and he became furious with her.
Mr Coffey said it was the prosecution's case that the accused threatened to kill her, repeatedly beat her and used scissors to threaten her, which he stabbed into a cupboard. The woman claims the events culminated in the accused having non-consensual sex with her.
The alleged victim told Mr Coffey that when the accused first approached her he told her that she was a good-looking girl who shouldn't be in the homeless hostel. She said he offered her money to show her around Cork and "he said he would buy me a new pair of trainers".
Some time later she said she was talking to one of her friends, who was a prostitute, when she was approached by the accused. He went with her and two of her friends to a pub and she was later left alone with him. She said he asked her to go to Limerick with him but she refused.
The hearing continues.