Garda's rape victim was in shock, court told
A 20-year-old woman went into shock when she was raped by a garda sergeant in a Garda station in Co Donegal, the Central Criminal Court heard today.
On her first day in the witness stand, the woman said the 51-year-old sergeant had told her she was beautiful.
“He bent down towards me as if he was going to kiss me. I said, ‘don’t even think about it.’ I turned my back again and I was back to where I was standing,” she said.
The woman could not get out of her mind the fact that she was a friend of the man’s son, who had previously escorted her to a beauty contest.
Earlier the court heard the young woman had met the sergeant in a local pub just 50 metres from the Garda station. She had gone there to play pool with friends and had fallen into conversation with the sergeant, who she knew to see.
She talked to him about a good restaurant close to the hotel in which she was working as a receptionist and about her previous relationship with his son.
“He said it was a pity things didn’t work out between (the son) and I because we’d have made a good couple,” she said.
The woman drank five pints of Guinness during her time in the pub and by 1am only she, the sergeant and two of the bar staff remained.
She tried to contact her sister on her mobile phone but there was no coverage. The woman told the court that the sergeant offered to go to the Garda station to look for a patrol car to give them a lift home. Her house was located around a mile and a half away from the pub.
They walked to the Garda station and the sergeant invited her inside. “I went in and hung my bag on the seat and I still had my mobile in my hand,” she said.
The sergeant was unable to locate a patrol car and offered to walk her to his house, where his son would give her a lift.
“I agreed, it was a lift home,” she said.
The court heard the woman had been given a lift home from the pub the previous night by another neighbour.
Inside the Garda station, the woman said the sergeant started kissing her and fondling her after she had told him not to.
She tried to fetch her handbag and leave the station. “All I wanted to do was go home and I couldn’t get out past him because he wouldn’t move. He stood in my way,” she said.
After the kissing and fondling, the woman said the sergeant then raped her. “I was just staring out the window, wishing I was outside. I don’t know how long it lasted,” she said.
When the sergeant stood back the woman tried to dress herself and noticed there was semen on her trousers. “I was thinking whether I was pregnant or not and he heard me saying that. He said, ‘yeah, you were great’.”
The woman who said she was crying after the incident, also cried when she retold this through the court.
After a question from senior counsel for the prosecution, Deidre Murphy, the woman said the sergeant went out of the porch door of the station and she followed.
“I was crying. I said, ‘you shouldn’t have done that, it shouldn’t have happened’. He said, ‘I know, it was my fault’.”
The woman walked with the sergeant to his house keeping her distance from him and looking in the direction of the hedge at the side of the road.
When they got to the sergeant’s house, he got a car and dropped her off at her family home at 2.20am. The woman said there was no conversation during the journey; she was just crying and looking out the window.
The sergeant, who is now 55, denies the charges of having sexual intercourse with the woman who is now 24, without her consent and sexually assaulting her.
The woman said that after the incident, which happened on June 21 2000, she went to bed without telling any of her family about it.
She got a lift to Derry the following afternoon, where she got the morning after pill from a family planning clinic. She made a complaint about the incident at a Garda station that night.
Senior Counsel for the Sergeant, Michael O’Higgins said it was his client’s case that the woman had initiated the sexual contact and that it was confined to consensual touching of intimate body parts.
During his cross-examination, the woman confirmed she had a tiff with the sergeant’s son when she discovered him with another person at a beauty contest.
Mr Higgins asked if she had told the son ‘You haven’t heard the end of this’ when he refused her a lift home from the pub on one occasion. She said she had said something along those lines because she was annoyed with him.
She also agreed that it was an enormous risk for the sergeant to suggest asking his son for a lift home from his house, when it was obvious how upset she was after the incident in the station.
Mr O’Higgins asked why he would have taken that risk if he had raped her.
“Because he’s sick,” she said.
The case continues.
