Court hears details of previous accusations made by alleged rape victim
A jury has heard how a woman who alleges she was raped by her daughter’s boyfriend made previous allegations of physical abuse against her daughter and teenage son.
The woman agreed with counsel for the defence, Mr Michael Liam O’Higgins SC, that in 2006 she told her psychiatric counsellor that her teenage son had physically abused her.
The now 54-year-old complainant, who was in psychiatric care for a number of years, told Mr O’Higgins that her son’s refutation of the claims were complete lies.
The accused man has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping the woman in the early hours of November 6, 2005.
The complainant, who suffers with prescription medication and alcohol abuse problems, agreed with Mr O’Higgins that she also made an allegation to her counsellor that her daughter had struck her with a closed fist.
She told Mr O’Higgin’s that her daughter was “telling lies” when she wrote a letter to one of the doctors charged with caring for her mother, rejecting the allegations.
The woman said that her daughter was very angry at the time and was “taking her anger out” when she described how in fact it was her mother who had become violent and that she and her brother had taken to locking their bedroom doors at night because of their mother’s temper.
The woman rejected a suggestion by Mr O’Higgins that she had made up nasty stories about her children because she had come in to confrontation with them.
In response to Mr O’Higgins claim that, as she was capable of making up stories about her own children, it was no “skin off her nose” to make up stories about the accused man, the woman said: “He did what he did”.
The woman, who told the jury that she suffered physical and sexual abuse at a care home between the ages of three and seven, also rejected a suggestion by her foster mother, given in interview and read aloud in court, that she was confusing current events with things that happened in the past.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of seven men and five women.
