Jury acquits Czech man of rape charge

He had denied raping and sexually assaulting a 24-year-old Galway woman on July 28, 2007, and said in evidence that they had been enjoying consensual sex after she ran up to him in the street and kissed him but he stopped immediately when she suddenly said "wait I can't" and started crying.

The jury viewed CCTV evidence showing the woman run to the accused and kiss him after throwing her arms around him. The security footage from a bank then showed the couple move together in the opposite direction and evidence was given that the woman's friend had earlier bet her "a tenner" that she wouldn't kiss him.

The woman's girlfriend said the complainant told her in a pub in a Galway town that she "wouldn't mind a shift (French kiss)" that night and asked her if she thought the accused who was with friends was "good-looking".

She told defence counsel, Mr Diarmaid McGuinness (with Mr Francis Comerford BL), she replied that she thought the accused was "nice-looking" and said in jest: "I bet you a tenner you won't shift him."

She said the complainant replied: "I bet I will."

The complainant's friend stood up in the witness box at the request of Mr McGuinness and exhibited to the jury how she encouraged the complainant to kiss the accused by cheering: "Go ahead, go for it XX !"

The complainant then left her to speak to the accused and started kissing him after a few minutes. When she returned into the pub after she finished kissing the accused they joked about the bet.

A doctor who examined the complainant some hours after she alleged she was raped said he couldn't find any physical or genital trauma on her body but added that this didn't prove she wasn't raped.

Prosecution counsel, Ms Mary Ellen Ring SC (with Ms Karen O'Connor BL), said a garda forensics report indicated there was no semen found on swabs taken from the complainant's body and samples of her clothing.

The accused told gardaí he had been introduced to the woman earlier that night and they kissed outside the pub for a few minutes. He told her he was leaving for his homeland the next day.

He thought he first saw the complainant about 15 minutes after his arrival at the pub before 11.30pm and he said he first spoke to her around 12 midnight and the second time at perhaps 12.30am.

He said she declined his invitation to "come home" with him because she said she had to get up early for work the following day but suggested after they kissed some more that he might wait 30 minutes for her.

He said he decided not to wait and started walking home with his flat mate and the flat mate's girlfriend but stopped when he heard the complainant call out to him.

He said she then "came up fast to me" and put her arms around him. He also put his arm around her waist and they kissed again. His friends then told him they would leave the hall-door open for him at their residence and they went home.

The accused said she then moved him behind a bank where her car was and the last thing she said to him before they started having sex was: "This is my car. Its not cold."

He said nothing else was said before the consensual sex which they both enjoyed until she said "wait I can't" and started crying.

He said he moved back two steps when she started to cry and remained there two minutes trying to find out what had happened. When she didn't reply he said he was going for cigarettes and left her sitting on the footpath beside her car.

The accused told gardaí he was "traumatised" by the situation said he didn't know what happened as he never experienced a girl crying during sex.

"When she started to cry, I stopped. It was the same time as when she said 'I can't'".

His flatmate said he and his girlfriend had been walking home with the man when the woman shouted after the accused to stop before she ran to him, embraced him and started kissing him outside a nearby bank.

He said they waited for a few minutes while the pair kissed but decided to go home and leave the front door open for the accused who woke him at around 2am and told him and his girlfriend that he had sex with the complainant briefly but stopped when she told him "she didn't want it like that".

The flatmate said the accused seemed puzzled and told him the girl wouldn't talk to him after that but called someone on her mobile phone.

He added that the accused speculated in "dark humour" that he thought she might have been calling the police or her boyfriend. He explained that he and the accused had previous trouble with men in late-night drinking pubs wanting to beat them up because they thought the Czechs were looking at their girlfriends.

The woman denied during the trial that she had been "caught-out" in her claims that she had "pressed redial" on her phone "several times" during the alleged rape at about 1.30am.

Mr McGuinness noted that phone records obtained by the gardaí showed no calls were made on her phone from 1.30am - when the CCTV footage showed her going to the accused and kissing him - until 1.45am and 1.46am when she tried to call a male friend and that the next siting on the CCTV was of the accused walking back along the street on his own at 1.47am.

Mr McGuinness suggested to her and in his closing address to the jury that she was "caught-out" by this evidence because the phone and CCTV evidence were consistent with the accused's story to the gardaí the next day about how he had sex with her and how it ended.

Counsel also noted that if she had pressed redial on her phone as she claimed to gardaí and in evidence, the phone records would have shown the number of one of her girlfriends whom she tried to call before 1.30am.

She rejected Mr McGuinness's suggestion that she had either "deliberately made a false allegation or garbled the whole thing up in your recollection".