A TRAVELLER told a jury in the Central Criminal Court yesterday he had not abducted or raped a prostitute as alleged in 1994.
In his second day in the witness box, the man (36) repeated earlier claims that gardai, the prison service and prosecution witnesses had conspired to frame him for the alleged rape in the Wicklow Mountains.
He had been ill in a Kildare house, where he was renting a room, on the night of the alleged rape, December 29th to 30th, 1994. The house owner said she let the accused stay in her bed that night while she slept on a chair. She had noted this in her diary.
However, prosecution counsel, Mr Pat O'Connell, put it to the woman that portions of a diary entry indicating the accused had slept in her house on the previous night. December 28th and not on the night of December 29th, had been obliterated.
Mr O'Connell said Garda handwriting experts had examined her entry for December 29th, 1994, and discovered the obliterated portion read: "I let (accused) stay in my room last night. It's the only place warm in the house. I am looking forward to my own bed tonight."
The woman replied that the accused did not leave her house until after 9 a.m. on December 30th 1994. About a month later she heard he had been arrested.
The accused has pleaded not guilty to charges of falsely imprisoning, raping and sexually assaulting the alleged victim.
Evidence in the 15 day trial has finished and the jury returns to court this morning to hear closing speeches from prosecution and defence counsels before being addressed by Mr Justice Moriarty.
During the trial, the young mother of two said she was working as a prostitute in December, 1994, to fund a heroin habit. She agreed a £30 price to have oral sex with the driver of a car. She said the driver and an accomplice abducted her and drove her to the Wicklow Mountains where she was raped against her will.
In his evidence, the accused claimed he had been harassed by gardai since his return from England in 1993.