A man accused of raping a teenager in a car in the midlands four years ago told gardaí that what happened to the girl was wrong and that he and his friends had a “fair idea” she had been taken advantage of, a trial has heard.
It is the prosecution’s case that the then 17-year-old got into a car with a group of men in the early hours of the morning and was driven to a location where five men raped her “one after another”.
Four of the men are on trial at the Central Criminal Court and have pleaded not guilty to raping the girl on the night of December 27th, 2016. A fifth man is not before the court.
The four men also face additional charges of sexual assault while three of the defendants are also charged with false imprisonment. The men are now aged between 22 and 24 and cannot be identified under the 1981 Rape Act. They deny all the charges.
On day 11 of the trial, the jury heard details of the five garda interviews of the fourth accused over the course of two days in March 2017.
The defendant, who was 18 at the time. said he had seen the complainant on the footpath of a midlands town and called out her name and asked if she wanted a lift. He said he knew her from Tinder and had sent a her message but that she had not replied. He said they had not met her in person or spoken before.
He said the complainant got into the back of the car and asked if she could be dropped home. He said he and another of the men asked the driver to do this but that she insisted she wanted to go with them to another location as long as she was dropped home after.
Felt uncomfortable
He said he had a feeling something was going to happen and felt she should have been dropped home. He said he felt uncomfortable because the complainant had been kissing his friend in the back and had moved to the front of the car and was kissing another of the accused.
He repeatedly denied that she gave him “a handjob” while she was in the back seat and the car was travelling out of town. At the start of the sixth interview, he told gardaí that this did happen.
Asked why he had previously lied about it, he said he did not remember during the earlier interviews. He agreed that the woman had been ‘grabbed and groped’ by all of those in the car and that ‘she was telling you all to stop’.
He also agreed that ‘she didn’t want any of you to touch her’ and she grabbed the hand of the driver, who was reaching from the front to touch her and said stop and ‘get your hand away’.
Asked was ‘it fair to say you took advantage of her’, he replied that “after hearing her say stop, possibly yeah”.He said he would describe her treatment in the back seat as “not good”. He said she was lying across the three men and he began rubbing her privates over her underwear.
He said she did not ask him to do that. When asked why did do it, he replied “I don’t know” and said he did not think it was right.
When gardaí asked ‘did you know at that stage you taken advantage of her’, he replied “yeah we had a fair idea when she got into the front (seat)”.
The accused said that when they got to a location out of town he left the car and the woman was kissing the front seat passenger and giving him a “handjob”. When he returned to the car he saw this man having sex with her.
He said she had sex with another of the passengers and he was not sure if the driver of the car had sex with her but he had seen them kissing.
Watching
He said that he and the others were outside the car and thought it was weird that the driver was inside the car watching the sexual activity throughout. He said he started to get a feeling that “it wasn’t ok”.
Asked if it was rape, he told gardaí: “I just didn’t get to hear if she consented or not in the car”. He also said “it crossed my mind but I honestly don’t know”.
He said that later on the complainant was sitting half out of the car and was asking where they were all from. He said she was “looking at me in a certain way so I went into the front seat”.
He said he was on top of her with his trousers down but only kissed her for 15 to 20 seconds and then got out. He said he did not think it was a good idea to have sex and he was not comfortable. He said it did not feel right “moving from one mate to another”.
“I realised I shouldn’t have sex with her, it wouldn’t be right,” he told gardaí.
Asked why he thought this, he said that “she was lying there defenceless” when he got into the car.
“I got the feeling I knew not to have sex with her and I’m glad I didn’t.”
He agreed that there was nothing normal about the scenario where they were ‘lining up to have sex while one fellow sits in the car watching’.
The accused agreed that it could have been a little bit of a scary situation for the complainant. After viewing CCTV footage of her leaving the car, gardaí asked the man if it seemed like she was having a good time. He replied that it did not “after seeing the video of her running away”.
Part of recording missing
Hugh Harnett SC, defending, put it to the garda that his client’s admissions of being masturbated by the woman in the back of car came after persistent denials over four interviews. He said the recording of the interview containing the admissions began 16 minutes after his client and gardaí had entered the interview room.
Mr Harnett submitted that the admission “came out of the blue” and he wanted to know “what happened in those 16 minutes that brought about such a rapid and controversial change of mind”.
The investigating garda replied that throughout the preceding interviews the suspect had drip fed information and disclosures to them. He said the delay in beginning the sixth interview was caused by the time taken to set things up in the interview and that such delays were unavoidable.
The defendant also told gardaí that on the drive back into town one of the men who had sex with the complainat said to him that ‘what we just did could be rape or sexual assault’. He said they were sitting in the back and “he only said it to me”.
He told gardaíhe “didn’t pay much heed to it” as “all I did was kiss her”. He said this in an earlier interview before admitting being masturbated by the woman.
He said that he and others met the following day after hearing that gardaí had arrested the driver of the car. He said “we were just talking about who had sex with her” and said “we were worried” because of the driver’s arrest.
The trial continues before Ms Justice Tara Burns and a jury.