An FCA corporal charged with rape told a jury yesterday a woman private consented to sex with him moments after he reprimanded her for "letting down the uniform" by kissing another colleague in a hotel foyer.
He claimed that after the intercourse, the woman, worried people would find out she had sex with him, made some rude comment to him.
The accused told his counsel, Mr Gregory Murphy SC, he could not recall her exact words but he had replied to her: "You should have thought of that before you dropped your knickers." She threatened to "get him" and she made the rape allegation.
The 23-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty in the Central Criminal Court to rape of the 22year-old woman in a building near a Midlands hotel after a Mass for deceased FCA members on November 19th, 1995. He told Mr Murphy he felt the way she had been kissing and "carrying on" with another corporal while in uniform was inappropriate behaviour in public. He also knew she had a boyfriend and a child who might find out.
He asked her to come outside the hotel to talk to her and she became upset about the possibility of her boyfriend finding out about the kissing.
The accused said: "She leaned into me and I put my arm around her to comfort her and we started to kiss." He claimed the kissing continued and they went into a building where they engaged in oral sex and then had consensual intercourse.
In reply to Mr Patrick Gageby SC, prosecuting, he suggested the other corporal would have been the one to have sex with the woman had he not interrupted them. He agreed he had just thought of this while giving evidence.
Mr Gageby suggested that the woman's alleged behaviour was an unusual response for a woman who had been worried her boyfriend would find out she had been "snogging" another man.
The accused replied: "No, it's not unusual." The accused said gardai fabricated elements of his statement which purported to be admissions of having sex despite the woman's objections. He signed the statement to get out of Garda custody, he said.
Earlier, a number of gardai denied that the statement was a "hodgepodge" of the accused's own words and parts suggested by gardai to support the rape allegation. In the statement, the accused is alleged to have said he had sex with her even though she told him to stop and that he covered her mouth with his hand when she protested.
The trial, before Mr Justice O'Donovan and the jury of seven men and five women, continues.