A MAN denied rape when he appeared in the Royal Court yesterday. The offence was alleged to have taken place between 5.30am and 6am at the woman’s house in May last year.

The woman told Crown Advocate Graeme McKerrell, prosecuting, that she had been asleep in her bed and woke when she felt a weight on her.

She opened her eyes to find the man, whom she had never seen before, on top of her. It was daylight.

She said she tried to push him away, shouting: ‘Who the hell are you? What do you think you’re doing?’

He did not speak and she ran naked downstairs, where her fiance was asleep on the sofa.

He woke when she shouted that there was a man upstairs who had had sex with her.

‘I thought it was you, I thought it was you,’ she said to her partner. She went into the bathroom, put on a dressing gown and sat on the toilet in a state of shock before going into the kitchen.

Her boyfriend, who also gave evidence yesterday, said that his girlfriend had been ‘hysterical’ when she came downstairs. He thought she was angry that he had been sleeping in the lounge.

He was just about to go after her when he heard the man, who looked as if he had been drinking, coming downstairs.

He asked him into the living room and challenged him as to why he was in the house, asking if he had had sex with his partner.

The fiance said that the man started hyperventilating and scratching his head, but said nothing. He said that he would phone the police and the man darted out of the door.

He phoned the police and then one of his partner’s friends. He then went to the bedroom to see if anything had been left behind.

He said that his girlfriend was shaking and an ‘emotional wreck’.

She said that the man had attacked her and asked her boyfriend why he had not beaten him up.

Advocate Peter Ferbrache, defending, said there were inconsistencies in the couple’s evidence regarding when she was wearing the dressing gown and whether she had told her partner that the man had cuddled her before sex.

Before the alleged incident, the pair had spent the evening with another couple.

They had a drink at the house where the offence was alleged to have taken place before all four went to a restaurant.

After the meal, they returned to the house for more drinks before the other couple left – the man at about midnight and his wife at about 1.30am.

The fiance said that his partner was drunk and that they spoke for about 20 minutes before he put her to bed. He helped to undress her and put her in the recovery position before tidying up and going outside, where he saw stragglers leaving a party in the house next door.

He closed the front windows and locked the back door. He started to watch a film on the television in the living room, ate some pizza and fell asleep before the film had finished.

He heard a ‘thud’ from the bedroom upstairs at about 2am. Believing that his fiancee was safely in bed, he was not concerned.

The trial continues today.