This article is from page 12 of the 2008-12-16 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
A WOMAN has denied in court that she made love to her ex-partner after he hit her. She said, “I can categori- cally 100 percent say it was not love. It was rape.”
She was giving evidence in the trial of a man who has pleaded not guilty to seven charges arising out of an al- leged incident in the complainant’s Clare home on September 9, 2007.
He denies three charges of rape, anal rape and oral rape of a woman, one charge each of falsely imprison- ing and threatening to kill her, aggra- vated burglary using a single-action shotgun and unlawful possession of a firearm, all on the same occasion.
He has pleaded guilty to one charge of assaulting the woman on the same occasion, causing her harm.
The woman told the court that the
43-year-old accused had announced that he was going to rape her before he did so.
She was surprised he had said that because minutes earlier he had de- clared his love for her.
She didn’t accept a suggestion from defence lawyers that the accused had a gun with him that night because he was intending to shoot himself.
She also didn’t accept that she started to row with her ex-partner when she woke up to find him in her room.
“He had a gun with him and I was not going to argue with him,” she said.
She said the accused was lying if he had told his counsel that he had not touched her in the face with the gun.
The complainant agreed that she had a cigarette with the accused that night. “I asked him for a cigarette be-
cause I was shaking. It was a break from his anger and it was a connec- tion between us to share a cigarette,” she said.
She said during the rape she had thought about trying to escape by poking the accused in the eye with a set of keys on the bed but she re- alised to get out she would have to jump out of a window when it was pitch black outside.
The complainant agreed with John Phelan SC, defending, that there was a “series of ups and downs” in their relationship, that there was a pattern of “moving in and moving out” and that they had “their share of fero- os (o) brome: 0 yca 000 8(o) 81 RcMe
The hearing continues today (Tues- day) before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of five women and seven men, at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin.