A MAN has gone on trial accused of raping and attempting to rape a female friend in Cork more than two years ago.
The complainant said when she went to play a CD in her kitchen her friend tried to kiss her before he punched her, tied her hands behind her back and attempted to rape her. The 44-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to two counts of rape, one count of sexual assault and one count of attempted rape in Cork on dates between September 12th and 13th, 2008.
The complainant told Timothy O’Leary SC, prosecuting, that she was friends with the accused for a number of years.
She said on the night of September 12th he rang her and asked her if it was okay for him to call around for the evening.
“He arrived around 8pm and had four bottles of Bacardi Breezers with him. We both sat at the kitchen table drinking and smoking cigarettes and some hash. I was drinking wine,” she told Mr O’Leary.
When she tried to put on a CD, the accused “got up and came over to me and tried to kiss me on the lips”, she said.
“I told him: ‘Don’t go there’ and I could see he was getting angry and his face changed.”
She said the accused punched her on the nose and pushed her to the ground.
“I was petrified and I begged him not to do this to me. He was like a monster.”
He tied her hands together behind her back with her top and kept her on the ground before he opened the zip on her jeans and pulled them down, she said.
She then said he told her to go upstairs to the bedroom and that he assaulted her there again. She said she asked the accused to untie her hands, which he did, and then he proceeded to put back on his clothes and told her to go to sleep.
“I told him I wouldn’t be able to go asleep until he left my house and I told him we are no longer friends and that I didn’t want to see him again,” she said.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul Carney and a jury of eight men and four women.