Wexford sex assault trial opens
A Central Criminal Court jury has heard how a woman who alleges she was orally raped and sexually assaulted by her former partner cut her wrist when the accused man told her he wanted to end their relationship on a previous occasion.
The woman told the court that she picked up a knife and lacerated her wrist in an act of “complete frustration” after a row where the accused man told her he had met another woman.
She denied a suggestion by Mr Paddy McCarthy SC, defending, that by cutting her wrist she had attempted suicide.
The woman said that two years before the alleged assault she had attended a mental health clinic and had been prescribed lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder.
The accused has pleaded not guilty to aggravated sexual assault, oral rape and false imprisonment of the woman in a Wexford village on August 6, 2007.
The woman told Mr Gerard Clarke SC, prosecuting, that she embarked on a relationship with the accused after moving to the area following her separation from her husband.
The woman told the court that she had argued with the man a week before the alleged assault, after which he told her he was moving out of the house and asked her to pack his belongings.
She said that on the morning of August 6, the man called to her house and the pair reconciled their differences after she wrote him a letter explaining her feelings. The man again called to her house between the hours of 11am and 1pm to remove guttering from the outside of the house.
The man then left and told the woman he was going to work, but when she visited the local pub later the same afternoon, she found him drinking with friends.
The woman then left the pub and sent the man a text message, asking if they were going to spend some time together that evening.
The man replied that he would come out and show the woman “how much he loved her” like he had done with his former partner.
The woman told Mr Clarke that she became upset at the message and when she telephoned him to clarify what he had meant, he told her to “get ready” and that he would show her “for six hours how much he loved her”.
The woman said that the man then called to her house and found her crying on the sofa. She said the man then dragged her by the hair and arms to her bedroom, where he tied her to the bed and physically and sexually assaulted her before orally raping her.
She said the man stopped the assault and cut her loose after she begged him to stop. The woman then locked herself in a bathroom before escaping through a window and alerting a neighbour.
The woman agreed with Mr McCarthy that she had consensual sex with the man on the afternoon of August 6 when he called to the house to dismantle the guttering but denied that she indulged in “bondage” or that she had wanted to beaten and whipped by the man as part of sexual practice.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury.
