Rape accused 'was arrested after missing mobile handed to gardaí'
A jury has heard that a north Dublin man, accused of raping a woman after breaking into her home, was arrested when gardaí received a Nokia 3310 mobile phone which had been reported missing from the house.
The accused allegedly gave the phone to a girl he befriended on the 51B bus. She used the phone for a number of weeks before giving it to gardaí in Finglas Garda station.
The phone has been identified during evidence by the complainant as the one taken from her house.
The accused has pleaded not guilty to raping and falsely imprisoning the woman in her west Dublin home on August 24, 2001 and to a third charge of burglary of the house and theft of a mobile phone and cash on the same occasion.
The Central Criminal Court jury also heard that scene of crime investigators found a balaclava and used condom at the scene while cigarette butts, a portion of the bed sheet and part of the mattress had been removed.
Garda Peter O’Connor agreed, "I did find the scene a bit unusual" when Mr Charles Corcoran BL, defending, suggested that pains had been taken to remove forensic evidence and yet a condom and balaclava had been left behind.
The complainant earlier told Mr Paul Coffey SC (with Ms Mary Rose Gearty BL), prosecuting, that the she was woken at 4am when two men entered her bedroom wearing balaclavas and brandishing kitchen knives.
She was bound and gagged, raped by one man who wore a condom, and sexually assaulted by the other. The men tied her up with cable before they left by the front door using her house keys.
The woman said she believed the man who raped her had ejaculated as she felt wetness between her legs.
Under cross examination by Mr Blaise O’Carroll SC (with Mr Corcoran), defending, she had agreed that she had not mentioned a condom in her first statement to gardai.
Dr Gouri Columb, who examined the woman in the Rotunda Hospital after the attack , told the jury the victim had been unsure that morning if a condom had been used.
The court heard that Garda Assumpta O’Callaghan had made an entry in her notebook on the morning of the attack that the woman had said a condom had been worn.
The hearing continues before Mr Justice Daniel Herbert and a jury of six men and six women.
