A DUBLIN man accused of raping a woman he had been dating told gardaí that they had consensual sex but she got mad with him and told him she would “get him” after he refused to bring her to an “early house” for a drink.
Det Sgt Michael Mulligan told the jury the accused said in interview that after sex the woman said “f*** this, I am off to an early house” and when he refused to take her she called him “a mean bastard”.
The accused said he refused to bring the woman for a drink because her family did not like her drinking, she was a recovering alcoholic and she had liver cancer.
He told gardaí that when he went to her home on the morning of the alleged rape she had been drinking vodka and orange juice.
He admitted that he had not seen her drinking it but said he had smelled it off her.
He said they chatted together, she asked him for a “fireman’s lift” up to her bedroom and they “made love as boyfriend and girlfriend would”.
The 37-year-old west Dublin man has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping the woman at her home on September 9th, 2004.
Earlier the woman told Conor Devally SC, prosecuting, that the accused raped her the morning after she told him that she didn’t want their five-week relationship to continue.
Det Sgt Mulligan told Mr Devally that the accused said he had not broken up with the complainant the night before as she had earlier testified.
He claimed that a fight he had referred to in text messages to her that night related to a row they had when she got annoyed with him because he had refused to dance with her in a car park after they had taken a walk together.
When asked by gardaí why he did not ask the complainant what she meant when she told him she would “get” him, the accused replied he didn’t pay any heed to her when she had been drinking.
He said she would get very paranoid with drink on her and she would get argumentative.
“When she has a drink on her you are in a no-win situation,” the accused told gardaí during interview.
He told gardaí that when he left the house that morning, she let him out the door and he described her as being in “great form” but then said she got “a bit stroppy” because he had refused to take her drinking.
He later told gardaí that their relationship ended that morning. He said he felt “s**t” because she had just told him she was texting another man she had been “seeing in work”.
“When she told me that at the door I could not give her a chance,” the accused said.
The accused told gardaí he could not understand why the complainant had made the allegation of rape.
Det Garda Gillian Ryan agreed with Isobel Kennedy SC, defending, that she took the complainant’s phone from her in March 2005, six months after the incident was first reported.
She agreed that all text messages sent from the accused to the complainant had been saved into a separate folder in the mobile phone and gardaí downloaded them.
Det Garda Ryan accepted that all the sent messages were deleted from the complainant’s phone so there was no record of any replies the woman may have made to those text messages.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Roderick Murphy and a jury of four women and eight men.