Alleged rape victim acted 'odd' at interview, court told
An interpreter has a Central Criminal Court trial that a Latvian woman "appeared to act a little bit odd for a person who was just raped" when giving her statement of complaint.
Ms Victoria Hincu was giving evidence for the defence on day-six of the trial of a 38-year-old Lithuanian man charged with raping and falsely imprisoning the complainant at places in Counties Meath and Cavan last year.
The accused, with a Meath address who has remained absent from the trial for several days, denies raping the woman, falsely imprisoning her and threatening to kill her during the night of March 11th, 2006.
Ms Hincu told defence counsel, Mr Brendan Grehan SC (with Ms Miriam Reilly BL) that the woman seemed very relaxed, was smiling and cracked a couple of jokes while making her initial statement.
However, Ms Hincu said she was unhappy about being asked to judge someone else.
"I'm just the interpreter. I have no right to give my opinion because I'm not a trained psychologist or social worker."
Ms Hincu told Mr Grehan that she was Moldovan and did not speak Latvian and had interpreted for the woman through Russian. She said that "all Latvians speak Russian".
She denied she had mistranslated the word "friend" in part of the woman's statement although she agreed with Mr Grehan that there was no distinction in Russian between the words "friend" and "acquaintance".
She added that she had "definitely not made any mistakes" in translating the woman's words and said that "translating isn't difficult."
She agreed with prosecuting counsel, Mr Gerald Clarke SC (with Ms Anne-Marie Lawlor BL) that she had no idea how a rape victim would react.
The trial continues in it's final stages before Mr Justice Barry White and the jury of nine men and three women is expected to begin its deliberations tomorrow.
