A MEDICAL witness told a trial yesterday that he did not believe a Co Cork boy could have been raped in the way he described.
Prof Barry O'Donnell said he found a number of aspects of the boy's story "surprising" and this made the claims "more unlikely".
He said the alleged victim had claimed he was kneeling at a computer in the accused man's house when the offences occurred. It would have been almost impossible for the accused to have committed the offences in this position, Prof O'Donnell said.
The witness said he was surprised the boy claimed he did not cry out and that the assaults took place on about 10 occasions in "exactly the same circumstances".
Prof O'Donnell told Mr Brendan Grehan, defending (with Mr Blaise O'Carroll SC), that if this was true, he wondered why the boy did not get up and walk away on the eighth occasion before he could be raped again.
He agreed with Ms Una Ni Raifeartaigh, prosecuting (with Mr Maurice Gaffney SC), that a boy might mistakenly believe he had been penetrated when in fact penetration had not actually taken place.
The witness was giving evidence for the defence on the second day of the trial in the Central Criminal Court of a 43-year-old father of two, who denies charges of buggery and anal rape of the boy, now 14 years old, on three occasions from January 1989 to July 1993.
The trial before Mr Justice Flood and the jury of six men and six women continues.