A Co Wicklow man stabbed in the groin by a close friend has denied in evidence to the jury at the Central Criminal Court that he raped the man's wife in her bed.
He also denied sexually assaulting her after a drinking session with her husband, but said there was consensual sexual activity involving kissing and touching which had also happened before in his car.
He also described how he later "felt a hot sensation" in his groin area and discovered her husband had stabbed him with a large knife.
The accused told the jury of six men and six women there were two victims in the case, the woman and him, and claimed there would be no trial if he had not been stabbed. The jury also heard that forensic tests did not reveal any seminal stains on a sheet from the alleged victim's bed.
It was the second day of the trial of the 36-year-old self-employed man who has pleaded not guilty to raping and sexually assaulting his friend's wife in her bed on July 30th, 1998.
He described to his counsel, Mr Paul McDermott SC (with Ms Roisin Lacey), how he drove the woman's husband home at about 3 a.m. after both had been drinking for at least seven hours.
He could not get him out of the jeep at the house and went in intending to ask his wife for assistance in moving her husband. She was sleeping but woke and partially turned to face him. He said he sat on the side of the bed and put his arm over her shoulder.
They began kissing and touching, and this continued for some minutes until she asked him where her husband was and when he replied he was in the jeep outside, she became hysterical and ordered him out of the house. He went down to the sitting room and could hear the woman and her husband arguing in the kitchen.
He then went out to the jeep and dozed off until the stabbing woke him. The accused said he pulled out the knife while her husband was shouting at him that he had had sex with his wife. He denied this but felt sick and remembered little more after that except the ambulance arriving and being removed to hospital.
The accused told Mr Anthony Sammon SC (with Mr Barry Hickson), prosecuting, in cross-examination that the woman's denials of earlier sexual intimacy between them were lies.
He denied Mr Sammon's assertion that he had concocted these suggestions to create a background scenario of sexual activity between them.
The accused man's wife gave evidence recounting an occasion before the alleged rape when she travelled in a car with him, the alleged victim and the alleged victim's husband who had the car stopped and ordered her husband to get out. She said the two men went to the back of the car and argued for 15 minutes.
She later discovered that the alleged victim's husband had alleged that his wife had put her hand on the accused's shoulder during the journey.
The accused's wife said that after the alleged rape and the stabbing, the alleged victim's husband called to her house with his brother. She said she refused to let him into the house because he had stabbed her husband.
The hearing continues before Mr Justice Barr.