A WOMAN TOLD a court today she was sexually assaulted by a man while she and the man and one of her friends slept beside one another in the woman’s bed, following a night out.

The woman told the opening day of the man’s trial that she woke up to find the man using one of her hands to masturbate him after the trio had fallen asleep in the woman’s bed, at her then student accommodation, on 15 February, 2020.

The woman’s female friend told the court she and the accused had consensually kissed one another in the alleged victim’s bed prior to the alleged assault, but that they had agreed to leave it at that and remain friends.

All three were students at the time and the two women met the man while out socialising at a pub in Limerick earlier on the night.

The alleged victim told Limerick Circuit Court that she and her friend invited the accused back to her apartment where she cooked them a meal before they all went to sleep in her double bed.

The woman said this was not unusual in a college environment where students were “going in and out of apartments all of the time and it was normal for people to crash and sleep wherever they could get a bed”.

She told prosecuting barrister, John O’Sullivan, that she did not invite sexual contact nor give the man the impression that she was interested in any type of sexual contact on the night.

The woman said that when all three got into her bed, she was wearing a jogging pants and a t-shirt, her friend was wearing pyjamas and the man was wearing his underpants and a t-shirt.

She said the man was positioned in between herself and her friend and that the three of them were singing and chatting before her friend fell asleep.

She told the court that the accused started to become “touchy-feely” and beckoned her into him for a kiss, and she said she rebuked his alleged advances.

“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 said.

She said that after rebuking the accused she left the bedroom to take a phone call but she returned and eventually fell asleep on the man’s arm which she said was laid out across her side of the bed.

The woman claimed she woke up later on to find the man “moving my right hand up and down on his penis” with his left hand.

She said she “froze for what felt like a few moments” before leaving the bedroom and going into another bedroom she said had been left vacant by another student who was away on the night.

“I was asleep when it happened,” she told the court.

The woman said that, later on that morning she politely told the other woman and the accused that they needed to leave the apartment as she had to get ready to attend a GPs appointment, that she had booked after she started to feel unwell from a “sore throat”.

She said that after attending the GP clinic that morning, she contacted another female friend and told her about what the accused had allegedly done to her.

This other woman gave evidence in court that the alleged victim had told her that the accused “put his hands in her trousers, and she told him she’d hit him in the balls”.

The witness told the court: “She (the alleged victim) told me that when she woke up, he (accused) was touching himself and giving himself a hand-job.”

When pressed by prosecuting counsel Mr O’Sullivan as to what the alleged victim said the accused had done to 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 alleged victim earlier told Mr O’Sullivan that on the night she had consumed “two vodka whites” before going to the pub where she said said she drank “four pint bottles of Bulmer’s Light”.

The woman said that she had felt “quite sober” by the time she got to her apartment after the pub, which was close to her accommodation.

“As a college student you ended up drinking every week so, there’s a level of (alcohol) resistance, and by the time I got home, I felt quite sober,” she told Mr O’Sullivan.

The accused, who is being represented by barrister Amy Nix, denies one count of sexual assault, and is not expected to give any evidence.

The trial continues tomorrow.