'I will hit you in the balls,’ woman warned before alleged sexual assault, Limerick trial hears

A WOMAN claimed she was sexually assaulted by a man while she was sleeping in a student accommodation after they met during a night out.

The alleged victim told Limerick Circuit Court that she had invited the man and one of her female friends back to her apartment after they socialised in a pub and that they all went to sleep beside one another in her bed afterwards.

The woman was giving evidence at the man’s trial before Judge Colin Daly and a jury of eight women and four men.

The woman gave evidence that she woke up to find the accused using one of her hands to masturbate himself.

READ MORE: Former school principal from Limerick receives more jail time for indecently assaulting pupils

The prosecution, led by barrister John O’Sullivan, claim the alleged sexual assault occurred at the alleged victim’s student accommodation, in the early hours of February 15, 2020.

The alleged victim told Limerick Circuit Court that she and her friend invited the accused back to her apartment earlier on the night in question. She said she cooked them a meal and they all went to sleep in her bed.

The woman said it was “normal” for students “to crash and sleep wherever they could get a bed”.

She told prosecuting barrister, John O’Sullivan, that she did not invite sexual contact from the accused, she said she also did not give the man the impression that she was interested in sexual contact on the night.

The woman said she and her female friend were positioned either side of the accused man in her bed and that they all sang songs and talked.

The woman’s female friend told the court she and the accused kissed one another in the alleged victim’s bed but they agreed to simply remain friends.

The alleged victim claimed that after her friend fell asleep the accused became “touchy-feely” and looked for a kiss off her which she said she declined and warned him not to repeat.

“I told him, ‘if you try that again, I will hit you in the balls’. That was me setting the boundary and the tone that I was only there to sleep,” the woman told the court.

She said she left the room to take a phone call but she went back to her bed and fell asleep beside the man with his arm underneath her.

The alleged victim claimed she woke up later on to find the man moving her right hand up and down on his erect penis. “I was asleep when it happened,” she told Mr O’Sullivan.

She said she “froze” and then left the room to go to another bedroom in the apartment.

The woman said later that day she told another female friend about the alleged assault on her. This woman told the court that the alleged victim told her the accused “put his hands in her trousers, and she told him she’d hit him in the balls”.

The witness continued: “She told me that when she woke up, he was touching himself and giving himself a hand-job.”

When asked by Mr O’Sullivan to clarify what the alleged victim told her the witness replied: “I don’t understand, she said that he had touched her and put his hands down her trousers and he was giving himself a hand-job”.

The accused is being represented by barrister Amy Nix, instructed by solicitor Dan O’Gorman. He denies one count of sexual assault.