Rape accused denies threatening to cut up woman

A 42-year-old man on trial for rape has denied threatening a woman, who has since died, that he would cut her up and put her in a suitcase if she did not agree to have sex with him.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, strongly denied the allegation concerning the 30-year-old woman when questioned by gardaí.

The jury of seven men and five women hearing the case at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork on Tuesday watched videos of interviews with the accused when he was questioned by detectives investigating a complaint he had raped the woman.

The man admitted having sexual relations with the woman on January 14th, 2017, at the rented house of a friend in Cork city. He insisted the sex was consensual at all times and he never threatened or forced himself on the woman.

The trial had earlier heard evidence from a 49-year-old man who told how he allowed the accused and the woman to stay at his rented flat for a couple of nights in January 2017.

He and the accused drank a bottle of vodka and the accused got very angry with the woman when he discovered that she had tampered with the witness's medication, said the witness before the jury and Mr Justice Tony Hunt.

“He flew into a rage – he said ‘I’ll show her’ and he asked her to have sex with me to make it up to me over going at my medication – he was telling her to have sex with me for taking my medication but I turned her down point blank,” the witness said.

Lunged

The witness said that after he refused to have sex with the woman, the man then told her she would have to have sex with him and lunged at her and caught her by the throat before breaking a bottle of wine off the bed and threatening her.

“He broke the bottle off the side of the bed and stuck it to her throat and said ‘You do what I tell you to do, b**ch,” said the witness, adding that he did not know what to do as he was confused and under the influence of alcohol.

The witness said the accused forced himself on the woman. “I did not know how to handle it. I was walking in and out of the room . . . I did not know how to stop it, how to intervene, how to help the girl,” he said.

“She was telling him to stop.”

The whole incident lasted about 30 minutes, he said.

Blaise O’Carroll SC said the defendant’s account of what happened was that the woman gave him a “blow job” and they had sex, and the witness intervened and told them to go to another room. The witness rejected this saying: “No, total lies”.

Re-examined by prosecution counsel, Alice Fawsitt SC, the witness said that at one point when he was threatening the woman with the bottle, the defendant said to her: "People like you should be cut up and put in a suitcase."

The accused has denied a total of six charges including two counts of rape and three counts of aggravated sexual assault.

The case continues.