A Co Sligo woman told a jury in the Central Criminal Court yesterday she was dragged into bushes and raped by a youth who had just "buried the hatchet" with her for fighting with her brother.
The woman, now 20, said the alleged attack took place in July 1995 when she was out with male friends celebrating the end of her Leaving Certificate exams.
She said the accused stopped raping her and ran off when her male friends came looking for her. Her friends chased him and brought him back to the scene, where he claimed he had not touched her, she said.
She made her friends vow not to tell her parents about the alleged incident. She went abroad and the matter was not reported to gardai until November 1995, she told Mr Gregory Murphy SC, prosecuting.
Some of her friends told the court that the accused man had called her a slut and a whore to her face after they chased him. He also threw coins on the ground near her.
The witnesses were giving evidence on the first day of the trial of the 20-year-old accused man, who pleads not guilty to raping and sexually assaulting the woman on July 3rd, 1995.
The woman told Mr Murphy she had been out with a number of male friends in a Sligo town celebrating the end of her Leaving Certificate exams in 1995.
She had bought a "naggin" of whiskey and drank it in the company of her friends down by a river.
At about 11.30 p.m. they went to a public house, but she did not have any more drink.
A short time later they left, and outside she met the accused man. He had previously fought with her brother, but he made up with her. She said he seemed like a nice person, and to talk they walked down a laneway with their arms around each other.
Her friends were walking ahead of her on the roadway.
She said the accused man suggested that they hide and dragged her into bushes. He tried to kiss her in a very aggressive manner, and she drew back.
She alleged he pushed her on to the ground, forced his hands under her clothes and touched her intimately. She said she begged him to stop and tried to struggle.
"He told me to `shut up, bitch' and that he would give me £100," she said.
While he was raping her, her friends came looking for her. On hearing their footsteps, he stopped for a few moments and told her to be quiet, while keeping his hand over her mouth. He then penetrated her again. Her friends then found them, and he ran off.
She was hysterical and kept repeating: "He hurt me". The next day she went and got the morning-after pill, she said.
She told Mr Barry White SC, defending, that she did not think there had been anything sexual about walking down the lane "arm in arm" with the accused man.
She also denied she had engaged in intimate kissing and consented to sexual intercourse with him.
Mr White suggested there had been animosity between her friends and the accused man before this incident and that she had cried rape because her friends would have turned against her for going off with the accused man. She replied: "I cried rape because he raped me."
She agreed she did not make an initial short statement to gardai until November 1995. She denied she had waited until 1996 to make a comprehensive statement to give her time "to get all the angles right".
The trial continues.