A woman who alleges she was raped by two men on a tour bus following a concert by US singer Jason Derulo has described the scene on the bus as "like something from Amsterdam".
The defendants, aged 35 and 44, deny the offences which are alleged to have occurred in a vehicle at an unknown location in Cork city on June 27th, 2014.
The 35-year-old man has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape, oral rape, sexual assault and false imprisonment of the then 19-year-old woman.
The 44-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to anal rape and false imprisonment of the woman on the same occasion. The accused men can not be identified for legal reasons.
The court heard Mr Derulo is not charged with any offence in relation to these events.
On Monday, the complainant told the court she arrived at the “VIP party” at a Cork city nightclub, attended by Mr Derulo and his entourage, at about 11pm.
She said there were about 100 people there, including Mr Derulo, his crew and lots of women. The woman said her employer had told her to “get loads of pictures with Jason Derulo for posting on social media.”
Vodka poured down throats
She said that in the nightclub she saw vodka being poured down women’s throats.
“I got one of the guys to pour a bit down my throat but I refused it then, because I didn’t like it,” she said.
The woman said she had consumed one drink at the bar on the night in question, a vodka and white.
She said some of the men were smoking a substance that smelled like cannabis and spraying champagne on women, soaking some of them.
The woman said she then was invited onto the tour bus, a hired vehicle from the UK, which was parked just outside the club.
“Girls were putting their hands up saying ‘pick me, pick me’,” she told the jury.
The woman said the bus was moving and she was standing by a kitchen area, when a man with a back-to-front cap on came over to her, put his head on her shoulder, zipped down her jumpsuit and slipped his hand inside.
“He was feeling around my genital area. I was wearing underwear and had sticky tape covering my nipples,” she said.
She said she told him to stop and she then zipped the garment back up.
The complainant said that as other girls, including her friends, began to disembark from the bus, she said a man identified as “cap guy” blocked her with his arm and told her: “You’re not getting off.”
She said: “He grabbed my clutch bag and threw it on the floor, and said I wasn’t to have contact with anyone.”
She claims he then brought her upstairs, where he raped her, orally and vaginally, while they were “half in, half out of a bunk bed.”
The woman described the scene upstairs on the tour bus as “like something from Amsterdam”.
‘Knickers down’
She outlined seeing women towards the back of the bus laughing and giggling and others with their “knickers down”. She said it was quite dark and people were shining torches.
She claims another larger man came over at one point and also raped her. The woman said she was terrified and asked them to stop, but they didn’t.
She said she managed to make her escape after a third man came over and said “I’m next.”
“I ran down the stairs, grabbed my bag and ran off the bus,” she said.
It is the prosecution case that “cap guy” is the 35-year-old accused and the larger man is the 44-year-old accused man.
During cross-examination, Sean Guerin SC, who is defending “cap guy”, said his client accepts he had sex with the complainant, and accepts she performed oral sex on him, but does not accept consent was absent.
“If you weren’t consenting, my client didn’t know that you weren’t consenting,” he said.
Mr Guerin asked the complainant why she had stayed at the VIP party if she was uncomfortable and had referred to herself in evidence as “a quiet girl who isn’t really into the whole party thing”.
She replied she remained at the venue because she wanted to get a photo of Jason Derulo.
Scared and terrified
Mr Guerin said that it was clear what was happening at the VIP party, that the men wanted to enjoy the company of women that night. The woman agreed with him and also agreed that she was “excited” to get on the bus.
She told counsel that during the alleged attacks, Mr Derulo was in a bedroom with two women with the door closed.
When questioned about “all her different accounts given on all the different occasions” by Mr Guerin the woman said she was scared and terrified when giving her first statement to gardaí.
“I was still in shock, I got a few words mixed up, I never gave my consent and I wasn’t intoxicated,” she told the court.
“The truth is not that you were raped on the bus, it’s that you were embarrassed and disgusted afterwards by your own behaviour,” Mr Guerin said.
The woman denied this.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul Butler and a jury of 10 men and two women.