A MAN ACCUSED of a three-in-a-bed sex assault has been found not guilty by a jury.

The man, in his 20s, had denied one count of sexually assaulting a woman who invited him back to her apartment and allowed him to go to sleep alongside her and one of her female friends in her bed after they met in a pub on a night out.

The three parties were studying in Limerick at the time, the man’s three-day trial, held at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court, heard in front of a jury of eight women and four men.

The man told Gardaí he was “shocked” when they put the allegation to him after his arrest following the alleged assault, five years ago.

The woman alleged the man used one of her hands to masturbate him while she was asleep next to him and another woman in a shared student apartment.

Earlier on the night, the two women went to a pub together and met the man and all three went back to the alleged victim’s home in the early hours of 15 February, 2020.

The alleged injured party said she cooked them a meal and the three of them slept beside one another in her “double bed”.

The woman told the court that on the night she warned the man she would “hit” him “in the balls” if he tried anything of a sexual nature with her, after he had sought a kiss from her in the bed.

The man, in Garda interviews, admitted asking the woman “in a jovial way” for a kiss. He maintained he had not pursued it after she turned him down.

The accused refuted the woman’s claims that she had told him she would hit him in his testicles if he tried anything of a sexual nature with her.

“This didn’t happen. Not once do I remember her threatening this or saying this to me,” the man told Gardaí.

The man told Gardaí he and the two women were “cuddling” in the bed, and “singing songs” and “chatting” before falling asleep together in the bed.

The man was positioned lying between the two women with his arms around them, and they were turned into him before they all fell asleep.

The man denied having any sexual contact with the alleged victim, telling Gardaí “absolutely not” when asked if he had removed his underwear while he was in the bed with both women.

When Gardaí put to the accused — the woman’s claims that he used one of her hands to masturbate him in the bed — he replied: “I totally deny it, it didn’t happen at all.”

The man said he felt “horrendous” at the allegation: “I absolutely deny that. I’m shocked to hear that.”

The man said he accepted that while he may have told the other woman that he fancied the alleged victim, he maintained he did not sexually assault her.

The man told Gardaí he consensually kissed the alleged victim’s friend in the bed after the alleged victim had briefly left the room during the night.

The alleged victim’s female friend who was in the bed on the night told the trial that she and the accused did share a kiss in the bed, and that it was “one hundred per cent mutual”.

The investigating Garda, Garda Ryan Hill, Listowel Station (formerly Henry Street, Limerick), agreed with the accused’s barrister, Amy Nix BL, that the accused “had no previous convictions”, that he was from “a decent, upstanding, hard-working family,” that he was “supported” in court by his family, and that he is in gainful employment.

Garda Hill agreed with Ms Nix that despite having the right to remain silent during Garda interviews after his arrest, the man “cooperated at all times with the Garda investigation and he answered all your questions”.

The alleged victim told the trial that after she and her friend invited the accused back to her apartment, she cooked them a meal and they all went to sleep in her “double bed”.

The alleged victim said the three-in-a-bed scene was not unusual at the time in the college environment, as students were “going in and out of apartments all the time and it was normal for people to crash and sleep wherever they could get a bed”.

The alleged victim told prosecuting barrister John O’Sullivan that she did not invite sexual contact nor give the man the impression she was interested in any type of sexual contact on the night. In fact, she said, she warned him against it.

She agreed that she and her friend were positioned on either side of the accused in the bed on the night.

She said she warned the accused she would defend herself physically if he tried anything of a sexual nature, after he had looked for a kiss from her.

“That was me setting the boundary and the tone that I was only there to sleep,” she told the court.

She agreed that after alleging the man had become “touchy feely” and had looked for a kiss from her, she left the room to take a phone call and returned to the bed and eventually fell asleep next to the man with his arm underneath her.

She alleged she later woke up in the bed to find the man “moving my right hand up and down on his penis” with his left hand.

She said she “froze” and went into another bedroom that had been left vacant by another student.

Two weeks later the alleged victim made a statement of criminal complaint of alleged sexual assault.

Another friend of the alleged victim told the trial that the alleged injured party told her that the accused “put his hands in her trousers and was touching himself and giving himself a hand-job.”

After deliberating for one hour and 38 minutes Thursday, the jury reached a unanimous verdict, finding the man “not guilty”.