A MAN charged with raping a woman in her home last year protested his innocence in the Royal Court yesterday. He claimed that the woman had not shouted for him to get off or pushed him away, as she had said in her evidence.

He said that there would have been marks on him if that had been the case, which there were not in photographs taken by police the day after the alleged offence.

He has denied raping her between 5.30am and 6am on 31 May..

‘I didn’t and never would. I’ve never done anything remotely like that.’

Yesterday – the third day of the trial – he said that he had drunkenly gatecrashed a party in the house next door after having had between six to eight pints and about four vodka and cokes in four Town pubs.

After being told to leave, he walked home to change out of his work clothes, which were wet from a swim in the house’s pool.

When he returned some 20 minutes later, at about 1.30am, he said that he went into the neighbouring house looking for partygoers, not realising that it was the wrong one.

He said that the front door was wide open and the lights were on.

He went straight upstairs, not noticing a man – the woman’s fiance – asleep on the sofa in the downstairs lounge, went into a dark bedroom and jumped into bed after removing his jeans, top and trainers.

When he woke up, he was not sure where he was. The room was light and he had his arm over a naked woman, whom he had not realised was in the bed when he got in.

He said that they started touching each other – he could not say who initiated it – and that the woman was still half asleep at this point.

‘To me, that was a mutual consent, acknowledgement of there being another being,’ he said. ‘If either party wants to stop, they say or do something, or both.’

He said her eyes were not open to begin with but they were at intervals, such as when they were kissing while she was on her back and he on his side. He had never seen the woman before and neither spoke at all.

‘Did you not think, ﾓsomething strange is going on hereﾔ?’ asked Crown Advocate Graeme McKerrell, prosecuting.

The man said that the situation was ‘interactive’ and just happened, although he had said that it felt ‘strange and surreal’ afterwards.

She left the room and he got dressed and went downstairs where he met the fiance, who asked him if he had had sex with her. He said ‘Yes’ and that he did not realise that it was anybody’s ‘wife’ and left when told to get out.

Answering a question from Advocate Peter Ferbrache, defending, he said that the last year of his life was the ‘closest definition to hell that I have ever had’.

Mr McKerrell questioned the consistency of his evidence, including how many doors he had tried upstairs before entering the bedroom and when he had started drinking.

Defence witness consultant gynaecologist Robert Haskins wrote a report based on information he was given that the woman had woken up to find a man on top having sex with her, as she had told the police and testified in court.

He said that he would have expected to see injuries or marks of some kind from this if the woman had been examined closely enough.

The photos therefore were not consistent with a sexual assault, he said. Research showed that between 40 and 80% of alleged victims of sexual assault would have injuries on their body not in the genital area.

The lack of bruising or abrasions would support the defendant’s version of events that foreplay had taken place before intercourse.

Mr Haskins said that he would expect the woman to be immediately woken up by the touching.

But he agreed that the man on top would have pinned the woman down and that non-consensual sex need not result in injuries.

He accepted also that medical evidence alone could not indicate whether sex was consensual or not. He said that she would have woken up more gradually due to being in familiar surroundings and certain responses could be automatic if she was used to particular behaviour with her partner.

The prosecution and defence will sum up today.