A MAN raped a woman by refusing to stop when asked during initially consensual sex, jurors in the Royal Court heard yesterday.
Ruben Miguel Rodrigues De Freitas is accused of committing the offence in the woman’s home in 2022.
He denies the charge of rape and failing to provide the police with access to his mobile phone.
Opening the case for the prosecution yesterday, Crown Advocate Mike Preston said anyone was entitled to refuse to have sex even if they had earlier agreed to it.
He told the court: “Initially the sex was consensual. But she later withdrew her consent and he carried on regardless. That is rape.”
The court heard that the woman told the 32-year-old that she wanted to go to sleep but when she returned from the bathroom to her bedroom she found him lying in her bed naked.
She lay with her back to him, dressed in nightclothes, but he began kissing her and she consented to sex, jurors were told.
Giving evidence in a recorded police interview played to jurors, the woman said: “It was getting very painful and too rough.
“I couldn’t breathe. He was hurting me. I told him to stop. He looked at me and just carried on.”
She said he then left, and added: “I lay in bed crying.”
When interviewed by the police Mr De Freitas said he had been too drunk to be capable of sexual intercourse and had no memory of the events as described by the alleged victim.
But Crown Advocate Preston said: “Getting so drunk that you cannot remember is not a defence to a criminal charge.”
The trial, which is expected to last at least three more days, is being presided over by the Deputy Bailiff, Robert MacRae.
