Rape victim “felt like a doll,” court hears

This article contains references to rape. Reader discretion is advised.

By Isabel Hayes and Eimear Dodd

A Spanish tourist who was allegedly raped in Dublin city centre while celebrating New Year’s Eve six years ago has told a jury she felt “like a doll” with no strength in her body.

The 33-year-old Louth man has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to one count of rape on January 1, 2019. He can’t be named for legal reasons.

It is the State’s case that the man raped the woman on a street in the Dublin Castle area and that the woman didn’t consent and was unable to consent due to the effects of alcohol or another drug. The man denies any wrongdoing.

Giving evidence through a Spanish interpreter on Friday, the complainant told Tony McGillicuddy SC, prosecuting, that she was standing outside a shop on the night in question when she got talking to a man.

The court had heard the woman had been in town to watch the fireworks that night when she got separated from her friend.

She said she didn’t remember who started the interaction. She wanted to find a bar where her friend was, the court heard.

The woman said she recalled she and the man “walked loads” and she felt “very unstable and did hold on to his arm”. She said at some point they stopped walking and they were in a “dark” area that had big chains to some kind of entrance and parked cars.

“I was feeling quite unwell,” the woman told the court. “I was holding on to the person beside me quite strongly because I was unstable.” She said she felt confused as they had not reached the bar she was looking for.

The woman said she was leaning against a wall so she wouldn’t fall and the first contact that she remembered with the man was something in her mouth that felt “unpleasant”. She said she tried to avoid it by moving her face aside “but that just gave him more access to the rest of my body”.

She said the man held on to her waist tightly and she thinks that at that time he penetrated her vagina. “I don’t have a clear memory of that,” she said.

In the course of giving evidence, the woman said there was “lots of blank moments” and that her vision was blurry.

“The next thing I remember, he pushed my head down and I noticed a very unpleasant taste in my mouth,” she said.

The woman said she felt “like a doll”. “I didn’t have any strength in my body.”

The woman said she then remembered walking with the man and thinking: “I had sex with that man and I didn’t want to.”

She said her vagina was sore and she later had trouble extracting a tampon which she had in at the time.

The woman said a couple then approached her and asked her if she was OK, before she went with them to find her apartment accommodation. However when they found it, she did not have a key and couldn’t get in.

The court heard the woman left at this stage and she asked the man to help her find a hotel. They went to a B&B and once in there, started kissing, the court heard. The woman said she was afraid and the man was “very persistent”. “I was saying I was thinking about his wife and daughter and I didn’t want to,” she said.

The woman said they then had anal sex. “I recall it was sore and I asked him to stop,” she said. She told the court the man did not want to stop, but she persuaded him.

The court heard they then left the B&B and managed to find her accommodation before the man left. The woman said she was ringing doorbells in between sleeping in the cold before she eventually gained access to her accommodation.

She said when she woke up, “I realised I had two rapes and there might be a medical issue with that”. She then went to hospital with her friend.

The jury has been told that no charge has been brought against the second man.

The trial resumes on Monday before Ms Justice Caroline Biggs, when the woman is expected to be cross-examined by defence counsel.

Earlier in the trial, defence counsel asked an investigating garda about a CCTV montage shown to the jury.

The garda agreed with Mr Dwyer that the woman had her arm linked with the defendant for the duration of the walk from the area where it is alleged that the rape occurred and O’Connell Street.

The garda also accepted that the CCTV footage of the woman’s movements that night started in a shop, but there was information that she had been in the city centre earlier to watch the fireworks.

Mr Dwyer put it to the witness that gardai could have used debit card payment information from the shop to trace several people that the woman interacted with while in this shop.

The witness agreed this was possible, but noted that gardai had made unsuccessful efforts to identify these individuals.

The garda agreed with Mr Dwyer that the complainant rang a friend in Spain on the afternoon of January 1, 2019. He said no statement was taken from the friend as “she’s not a witness, she was a person living in Spain”.