A WICKLOW TOWN MAN accused of orally raping a woman in a lane outside her Kilkenny home claimed in a garda interview that she performed oral sex on him after they had been kissing for some time.

The 28-year-old defendant has pleaded not guilty to charges of oral rape and aggravated sexual assault of the woman at a laneway outside her Kilkenny home on April 1 2005.

On Monday, day four of the trial at the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin, the alleged victim described how she had been out drinking with her boyfriend's sister and some friends in a well-known Kilkenny nightspot for three hours before the alleged assault took place. By her reckoning she had around five vodkas and two shots of sambuca. Shortly before 2 a.m. she told a work colleague that she was 'getting a bit drunk' and was going to go home.

She couldn't remember the walk home but had no recollection of being accompanied or of seeing anyone. Her next memory was of being pushed down the laneway next to the flat she lived in with her boyfriend.

'He just wouldn't let me go, he kept pulling my head down and said 'I won't hurt you love, just give that a suck.'

He also began to grab at her tights but she managed to fight him off and woke her sleeping boyfriend once she gained entry to the flat.

When asked what was going through her mind during the assault, she said, 'I fought him even harder and just thought 'No, you're not going to do this to me.'

She agreed with Mr. Michael O'Higgins SC, defending, that she didn't remember walking home and her memory remained a blank until she got to the laneway where the alleged assault took place.

She denied she had met a man while leaving the pub and that things 'were going well' as they struck up a conversation while walking along. She further denied that she had left the pub with a man and on the walk home, and became amorous with him. ' I don't think that happened. It's not true.'

Mr. O'Higgins said a witness with no axe to grind spotted the complainant outside the pub with a man he thought was her boyfriend.

She further denied the reason she couldn't remember the walk home was because she didn't want to, as she had met someone.

'I was drunk, I just wanted to get home,' she said.

She told the court she couldn't recall telling a doctor at a Sexual Assault Unit that a stranger had put the key in the door to her flat, pushed her in and followed her.

She added that she never discussed the alleged assault with her boyfriend because she was embarrassed. When the Wicklow man was first questioned, he was indentified on CCTV footage leaving the same nightclub as the complainant. He claimed he went back to his partner's home that night. He also provided a sample of saliva to the gardaí in January 2007 for DNA analysis. His DNA matched the profile found on a false nail belonging to the complainant which was discovered in the vicinity of the alleged attack.

The accused acknowledged having been there that night and admitted he had been removed from the nightclub after an 'indiscretion'. He claimed he had returned to his car and then drove to his partner's house. Once the DNA match was revealed, Detective Garda William Maher drove to Wicklow town to arrest the defendant, who was staying at his parent's house. Before he got there he received a call from the man asking to meet him at a nearby train station.

In an interview he stated he met the woman outside the nightclub that evening but couldn't remember her name. They were walking alongside one another and stopped for a kiss along the way, when the woman put her hand down his trousers. She said she lived nearby and invited him to 'come back up'.

The woman performed oral sex on him about three yards into the laneway. He denied he had requested her to do this. Afterwards they kissed and he gave her his number.

When asked by the gardaí why he hadn't mentioned this when they first spoke to him in May 2005, he replied that he had been confused but it had all 'flooded back to him'.

The trial was continuing at the time of going to press, before Mr Justice George Birmingham and a jury of five women and seven men.