A MAN ACCUSED of raping a woman in a Dublin hotel told gardaí in an interview that the woman and her friend may have made up the allegation because he had assaulted her.
Det Sgt Mark Kavanagh told the Central Criminal Court yesterday that told Pauline Walley SC, prosecuting, that when the accused man was asked why he had been hiding in a linen closet, he replied that he could not find his way out of the hotel and had fallen asleep there.
“The officers who found me will tell you that I was asleep,” he told gardaí.
Det Sgt Kavanagh told the jury that he had denied having sex with either of the women that night.
“There is no way I had sex with her, the only bodily fluid we exchanged was when we kissed,” He also denied that he had forced the woman to perform oral sex. He said the women had invited him back to the hotel.
The 54-year-old English man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to rape, oral rape and sexual assault of the woman, whom he had met earlier that night, March 20th, 2007, in a pub.
He has also pleaded not guilty to threatening to kill the woman and her sleeping friend. He has admitted assaulting the woman.
He denied that he had suddenly hit the complainant when she was standing at the door saying goodbye to him and that he had forced her into the bathroom. He said he may have threatened to kill her after she hit him with a wine bottle.
The accused allegedly told gardaí that he had hit the woman twice, once on the nose which, he suggested, could have caused her black eyes.
The man said the trio brought wine back to the women’s hotel room before all three got undressed to their underwear and the complainant fell asleep. He said the woman then woke up and when she saw him and her friend sitting on a bed watching television, she asked them should she leave the room.
Her friend replied that they had only been watching television but the accused claimed that the complainant struck him on the leg with a bottle of wine. He hit her with an open hand in the face.
He told gardaí that he went into the bathroom to put on his jeans but the complainant followed him in and struck him on the back of the head with the wine bottle. He said he “saw red” and punched her.