Monday, 25 Nov 2024

Two found guilty of raping 'blind drunk' student in flat after night out

A jury has found two men guilty of raping a student who they brought back to their flat after a night out drinking.

Boakye Osei (29), of Twoban, Burnfoot, Co Donegal, and Kelvin Opoku (33), of Cill Graine, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, had pleaded not guilty to raping the woman in a town in the county in February 2015.

After a five-week trial, a jury of seven men and four women took just over two hours to return unanimous guilty verdicts. Justice Alex Owens ordered a Probation Service report for both men and certified them as sex offenders.

He also ordered a victim impact statement to be prepared for a sentence date on January 13. He remanded the two Ghanaian nationals in custody to that date.

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During the trial, the woman, now aged in her 20s, testified she had been out drinking with her friend in a local nightclub and she was drunk and finding it difficult to walk home.

The woman said when she and her friend left the nightclub she was “very intoxicated”.

She said she and her friend were walking home when they came across two men sitting in a parked car.

The woman said her friend spoke to the men and then told her, “we’re gonna get a lift home”.

The complainant said they drove for about 10 minutes before entering an apartment she didn’t know.

“I remember being quite drunk and staggering up the stairs, I couldn’t walk properly,” she told the jury.

She said the men offered them drink in the flat.

She told the jury she remembers lying on a bed and someone heavy on her and then something “inside her”.

She said the men swapped over and the second man raped her.

The woman said she was “blind drunk” and could not and did not consent to any sexual activity.

Her friend gave evidence she was kissing and touching Osei while Opoku was having sex with the victim on the same bed.

She said she told Osei she didn’t want to have sex and he went over to her friend and had sex with her.

Osei denied any sexual activity between him and the complainant.

When shown evidence his semen was found on her underwear, he replied, “No comment”.

His lawyers argued the semen traces could have come from cross-contamination.

Opoku told gardaí he and the woman had sex, which she consented to. He said he didn’t believe she was too drunk to consent.

Gardaí later showed him mobile phone footage taken by the victim’s friend in which the victim is staggering around the apartment and later falling on the bathroom floor, exposing her underwear, before the two men hold her up.

Opoku said she wasn’t in that condition when they had sex.

He and the victim’s friend told gardaí the victim was saying “harder” and moaning during the sex.

Cross-examined on this, the victim said she may have been dreaming and had a history of talking and moaning in her sleep.

“I was half-way between sleep and drunkenness. I felt like I didn’t know what was happening.

“I didn’t know if it was a dream or it was actually happening. I was just so drunk,” she said.

“In terms of consenting, I in no way did consent to having sex with these men or to them touching me or coming near me in any intimate way,” she added.

She told the jury she and her friend woke up in the apartment the next morning and began watching the mobile phone videos.

She said that one of the men told her to delete the footage and was blocking the door out of the apartment.

The woman said she lied and told the man she had deleted the footage and he then offered to drive them back to their flat in the town.

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