Taxi driver accused of rape seen getting into back of car

A taxi driver, accused of raping two young women in Dublin on two separate nights in 2022, claimed the second young woman was smiling as he had sex with her and asked him if it was “off the bill”.

The man who is 50 and from Dublin, denies raping the women who are both now 21, in June and August 2022.

He claims all sexual interactions with them were consensual.

The jury was told this morning that after picking up the second young woman in the city centre, the taxi driven by the accused man stopped in a location in her hometown for around seven minutes in the early hours of the morning of 9 August 2022.

The driver is seen on CCTV getting into the back of the car and getting back into the front just over six minutes later.

The driver then dropped the young woman home and asked her for the fare. She told her mother she had been raped by him.

The jurors heard evidence that the driver was arrested on 22 August 2022. DNA taken from him matched male DNA taken from the young woman’s body. He was also shown CCTV footage and a statement made by the young woman.

After this, the court heard the driver prepared a handwritten statement for gardaí.

He said he categorically denied the allegation of rape and said all sexual contact was fully consensual.

In his statement, the man said the woman became quiet on the drive home and he presumed she had fallen asleep. He said when they arrived at her hometown, he drove around to increase the fare and said he felt “ashamed and guilty” about that.

He said he then pulled over and turned around to ask the young woman where she lived. He said she was awake and she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. He told gardaí he felt “flattered” that a younger woman was interested in him and kissed her back.

He said he asked her if she wanted him to get into the back and she said yes. He claimed they began having sex – she was kissing him and smiling, he said, and asked if it was “off the bill”. He said he thought this was a joke and he replied “no, it’s not” in a jokey manner.

He said the sex “lasted for a few minutes” and he then drove her home.

When they got to her house she went in to get a charger so she could charge her phone and pay him, he said. Then her mother came out and gave her money.

He told gardaÍ he felt “ashamed” for cheating on his wife and that he had previously been unfaithful. He said he should not have asked the young woman for the taxi fare but he claimed all sexual contact was “consensual” and he had “no reason to doubt she was a willing participant throughout”.

A witness from the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit at the Rotunda Hospital told the court the woman had two areas of internal injury, but she said it was not possible to differentiate between injuries sustained during consensual or non consensual sex.

Last week, the first young woman in the case told the court she had been raped by the man in the back of his taxi after she had been out in the city centre in June 2022.

The court heard the two complainants in this case did not know each other at all.