A MAN has told a jury he woke in his bed in a Tipperary hotel after a wedding to find a stranger having sex with his girlfriend.
“There [are] no words to describe the shock. The most unbelievable shock I have ever had in my life,” the witness said.
The accused (27) has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin to raping the woman at a Tipperary hotel after a wedding function on July 7th, 2008
The witness later told defence counsel Michael Delaney, while under cross-examination: “This whole vista is etched into my memory and will be etched into my memory as long as I live.”
The man told prosecuting counsel Éanna Mulloy that immediately after the incident, his girlfriend was “curled up with her knees pushed into her chest, rocking back and forth and wailing hysterically”.
He said he sat down on the bed, got dressed and said: “I am going to kill him.” He left the room and saw the accused being held by two staff members from the hotel and wearing a white towel. He later returned to his room after one of the staff members said he was going to call gardaí.
The witness said he had gone to bed that night and left his girlfriend talking to a woman on the stairs. He woke up some time later after “sensing” some movement to his left and said it did “not feel right”. He was “groggy” and what he saw was “just beyond belief”.
He propped himself up on his elbow and his girlfriend opened her eyes.
The witness told Mr Delaney that the first thing he said was “what the f..k!” before he struck the accused.
He said his girlfriend almost simultaneously pushed the man off her. He accepted a suggestion from counsel that he could have hit the accused a fraction of a second before his girlfriend pushed him away.
He then jumped off the bed and struck the accused again, “vaulting” over the legs of his girlfriend, who had been lying on her side in the foetal position.
The witness told Mr Delaney the accused was naked and said his girlfriend appeared to be wearing no clothes, that he could see, apart from her bra.
He agreed he gave the accused a “good beating”. “I tried as best as I could to inflict as much damage as I could,” the witness told the jury.
The hotel manager said his attention was drawn to a man standing naked on the first landing of the building. He went up to the man with a list of the hotel rooms and who was staying in them, along with a colleague who was carrying a towel to cover the man.
The accused told him his name but could not recall his room number or the name of the person he had been staying with that night.
The witness said the accused appeared to be drunk. He then noticed another man come along a corridor.
He said this man was angry when he saw the accused and he attacked him, punching him once or twice. He and his colleague then separated the men.
The trial continues before Mr Justice John Edwards and a jury.