A Dublin man has denied at the Central Criminal Court that he raped a teenage neighbour in his car about an hour after they met and kissed on the street near their homes.
The accused told the jury he asked the woman twice for oral sex but she refused. He then asked her to have sex and she didn't give him any sign of refusing.
It was the fourth day of the trial of the 25-year-old man, who has pleaded not guilty to raping the woman in a west Dublin suburb on September 15th, 1996.
Evidence in the case has ended and the jury will retire to consider its verdict after it has been addressed by counsel for the prosecution and defence and by Mr Justice Carney.
Earlier, Dr Mary McCaffrey, Rotunda Sexual Assaults Unit, told prosecuting counsel Ms Isobel Kennedy she found three linear bruises on the now 22-year-old alleged victim's left shoulder. The pattern was consistent with fingertip pressure. The woman had no injuries in the genital area.
The lack of injury here in a person who had been previously sexually active did not mean non-consensual sex had not taken place. Cross-examined by defence counsel Mr John Phelan SC she agreed she couldn't contradict the accused's claim that he had not caused the bruising. She could not contradict the suggestion that it might have been caused by the alleged victim being grabbed, even in a friendly manner, by someone from behind.
The accused told the jury he and the girl kissed "passionately" on the street shortly after they met at about 3 a.m.
He said he invited her to come in his car to somewhere quieter and denied she had invited him to come for a meal. "The two of us just became sexually aroused. We were sexually attracted to each other," he said. He went to a park with the intention of continuing what they had been doing.
He did not understand why she made her complaint to the gardai. The hearing continues.