Woman “woke up to find a taxi driver raping her,” court said

A second young woman told the Central Criminal Court how she woke up on her way home after a night of drinking and found a taxi driver raping her.

The woman, then 20 years old, testified in court that she fell asleep in a taxi on her way home from a night out in Dublin city centre in the early hours of August 9, 2022 and woke up to find the driver on top of her having sex with her.

She burst into tears on the witness stand after describing what had happened to her.

The 50-year-old driver from Dublin is accused of raping two young women on two separate nights in the summer of 2022. He pleaded not guilty.

The first young woman, now also 21 years old, told the court last week that she was raped by the defendant in the back seat of his taxi in the early hours of June 26, 2022.

She told the court that she had dated co-workers but then broke up with them.

She described herself as “very drunk” after drinking more alcohol than she was used to.

The second young woman said she had gone out with friends and planned to stay overnight at her friend’s house.

They spent the early evening getting ready and having a drink before heading downtown, where they visited several bars and a nightclub and drank some more, including a few glasses of Sambuca.

She said they left the nightclub around 2:30 a.m. However, she became separated from her friends when she went to get chips and was then not allowed into the restaurant where the rest of the group had gone.

She decided to just go home. She said she was tired and pretty drunk by now.

She told prosecutor Gerardine Small she could not remember whether she had hailed a taxi or whether it had simply stopped for her.

She got into the back of the taxi, told the driver she wanted to go home, told him where she lived, and then fell asleep.

She said she didn’t have any conversation before she fell asleep.

The next thing she remembered was waking up and finding the taxi driver on top of her, she said.

She said she realized he was having sex with her and turned her head away because she didn’t want him to kiss her.

She said she was in pain and shock and didn’t know how to defend herself because she couldn’t believe what had happened to her.

When the man finished, he told her to get ready and got into the taxi. She said she fell asleep again.

The young woman described how she was again in shock and then collapsed in the witness stand.

After a short break, the woman continued her testimony and explained to the court that the man drove her back to her house and charged her for the travel costs.

She said her phone was dead – she had to knock on the door of her house and her parents finally let her in.

She said she “foolishly” got back in the car to charge her phone so she could pay the driver, as she didn’t know what he would do next if she didn’t pay.

However, she said her phone wouldn’t charge, and one of her parents came out and gave the driver cash.

The driver drove away and she said she burst into tears and told her parents what had happened.

She told Ms Small that she had not consented to the man having sex with her.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Lorcan Staines, she denied kissing the man and that he kissed her when they reached her home town.

Mr Staines said it was the driver’s claim that he asked the young woman if she wanted him to get in the back seat of the car and she said yes.

The young woman said in court: “That didn’t happen at all.”

She said that at this point she kept losing consciousness.

When asked if she told a police officer and a nurse in the sex crimes treatment unit at the time that she remembered the man getting out of the front and getting into the back of the car, she said she couldn’t remember. She just remembered waking up and turning her head away from him because she “didn’t want it to happen.”

She said she neither gave her consent nor instigated anything.

The court heard the man told police they had consensual sex, that they were both smiling and “having a lot of fun”.

He denies the rape allegations in both cases and claims that the sexual interactions with the two young women were consensual.