A young man who denied rape at an apartment in Killarney suggested that the young woman made the allegation because her friend walked in on them and that he had been kissing this other young woman earlier.
However, the complainant testified at the Central Criminal Court that the young man raped her during a weekend away in Kerry.
She said she was sleeping after socialising with friends on a weekend away in Killarney when she woke to find the accused man having sexual intercourse with her. She said she gave no consent.
The case was heard by Ms Justice Eileen Creedon and a jury of seven women and five men at a sitting of the court in Cork and the accused man was found not guilty by the unanimous decision of the jury. There is a prohibition on identifying the parties because of the nature of the charge.
The Irish Examiner reports that prosecuting senior counsel, Donal O’Sullivan, said in the trial: “A person does not consent to a sexual act if he or she is asleep. The facts of the case are for you (the jury) to decide.
“It was September 2020. This was the COVID time and there were restrictions but people were able to travel. The injured party and her friends decided to travel to Killarney and stay there for a night. They were socialising. Quite a bit of drink might have been consumed by the injured party during the course of that evening.
“In the course of the night a number of people came to the apartment. One was (the defendant). The injured party said she was in bed asleep and felt a penis being taken out of her vagina. She says sexual intercourse occurred when she was asleep.”
A memo of a garda interview given by the accused, who was represented by defence senior counsel Ray Boland, was read to the jury.
In the memo, the young man who was 21 at the time said that he had been texting one of the young women in the apartment for a number of weeks and that earlier in this particular night they had been kissing and cuddling each other. He said they did not have sexual intercourse.
He said there were two beds pushed together in the apartment and that later in the night five or six of them were in those beds. He told gardaí that the complainant started touching his private parts, he then started touching her and they began having sexual intercourse.
He said the young woman he had been kissing earlier came into the room from the dining room. He said the complainant immediately started saying it was rape because the other young woman was her friend.
He said the young woman he was with earlier was shouting. He said everyone knew that he had been meeting with her. He said she was upset.
He said the complainant was awake all the time and she was the one who commenced the sexual touching. He suggested that her reason for claiming it was rape was because she was friends with the other woman who was upset to see the accused and the complainant together in the bed.
He said gardaí showed up at one stage because of a noise complaint about music and shouting and that he and his two friends left and slept outside in their vehicle before returning home later in the morning.
The seven women and five men of the jury took approximately three hours to reach their unanimous verdict and found the defendant not guilty of rape.
