A WEXFORD mother told a jury she was raped on her doorstep in the early hours of the morning by an attacker who called himself "the man from nowhere".
The woman later denied a suggestion by defence counsel Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley SC that she had consented to sexual intercourse.
She was giving evidence on the first day of the trial of a 40-year-old man who has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping and sexually assaulting her on September 13th, 1992.
The alleged victim, who is aged 45, claimed she was forced to bend, balance with one hand on the doorstep and remove her underwear before being raped from behind.
She said the incident started sometime after 2 a.m. when she was awoken by knocking at the bedroom window of the isolated bungalow where she lived with her daughters, who were then aged 14, eight and one. She was separated from her husband at the time.
She told prosecution counsel Ms Maureen Clark SC she heard someone try the handle of the front door but it was locked. She then heard the kitchen window breaking and she and her two eldest daughters went into the kitchen where they found glass on the floor.
The noise then stopped and she went outside and got a wooden board to put in the window.
She looked out, she said, and saw a "tallish man" who was calling on her by name to come out of the house. She asked who he was and he replied: "I am the man from nowhere". Asked what he wanted, the man answered: "You know what I want".
The woman told Mr Justice Morris and the jury of eight men and four women she did not know, what he wanted and did not know the man at that stage.
The situation went on for some time and the man said he would count to 10, waiting for her to come out.
The alleged victim wept as she recalled opening the front door with a hammer in her hand. She said she could not use it and the man was pulling her out as her eldest daughter tried to pull her back in.
The man spoke with a German accent and had a jumper over his head but she saw half his hair and one eye. He had drink taken.
He ordered her to go back into the house and tell her children everything would be all right. "I did but I didn't think so", she told the court.
She was terrified and when she went back out to the man he began to maul her breasts. He told her to turn around and he raped her.
Afterwards he discounted her fears she might be pregnant and gave her a cigarette, she told Ms Clark. She said the man claimed to have a gun and she thought he was holding the handle of a hatchet.
She had an idea that her attacker was the accused man and he warned her not to report the incident or she would "be dead". After he left, she went back into the house and told her eldest daughter she had been raped.
Later that day she went for the morning-after pill and the doctor reported her rape allegation to gardai, the woman told Ms Clark.
The trial continues.