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"Fri, May 01 2026, 16:42:29 GMT-4" [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4] ]

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Date Posted: 06:10:10 04/23/02 Tue
Author: Bangor
Subject: Ulster man's rape accuser breaks down
In reply to: holylands belfast 's message, "Holylands University Area Belfast - Rapist gets five year term" on 10:55:18 04/22/02 Mon

Ulster man's rape accuser breaks down
http://www.belfastnewsletter.com/fullnews.asp?DJID=5546

By Jude Sheerin
A woman broke down in a court yesterday (Monday) when asked to identify a man she has accused of drugging and raping her.
Robert Lyttle, 26, from Lismore Avenue in Bangor, denies drugging the 21-year-old student without her knowledge and sexually assaulting her.
Lyttle is accused of sexually assaulting the woman outside a rugby club in Edinburgh on February 15 and 16 last year.
The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, broke down on the first day of the trial at the High Court sitting in Edinburgh.
She told the court she had four vodkas and another spirit on the night of the alleged assault but insisted she was not drunk when she met Lyttle in a night club in the city’s Lothian Road.
The woman said the accused had approached her in the Subway West End, where she was on a night out with friends.
She claimed he persistently offered her a drink of an alcoholic beverage called Wicked, containing a mixture of vodka and Irn Bru, which she had sipped.
"He was gesturing the drink to me and seemed really eager for me to drink it but I don’t like that drink," the court heard.
"I had a sip to keep him quiet, really because he was annoying me by putting it in my face all the time."
She told the court that things then went "a bit hazy" and by the end of the night she was staggering up the stairs of the night club.
She kept losing her balance, adding: "I was just all over the place."
The student told the court she left the club alone at the end of the night to catch a taxi when the accused pulled up in a car and asked her to get in.
Lyttle, she said, became aggressive and began swearing as he told her to get in the car after she refused.
"I got in the back and he said: 'You could have got in the front, I don’t bite you know'," she said.
She remembered being outside what she later identified to police as Boroughmuir Rugby Club in Edinburgh’s Meggetland.
The complainant alleged that Lyttle then stripped her and forced her to carry out sex acts before raping her as she lay in the back of the car.
Lyttle is charged with administering a stupefying substance to the woman without her knowledge, rendering her incapable of resistance.
He is accused of inducing her into his car and driving her to a rugby club and raping her.
The woman told advocate depute Murdo MacLeod she had "definitely not" consented to any of the sex acts.
She claimed that, after the alleged rape, Lyttle then drove her back to her parents' house in Edinburgh, where the student was living last year.
"I remember seeing my jeans on the floor of the car and wondering what they were doing there, why aren’t they on my legs?" she said.
"I wasn’t thinking rationally, alarm bells just weren’t ringing."
The student alleged she was re-dressed by the accused but her clothing was dishevelled.
The court heard her mother had let her into the house at around 5am on the morning of Friday, February 16 and she went to the bathroom where she broke down.
"I was crying hysterically but I didn’t know why. I couldn’t remember what had happened," she said.
When she was in the bathroom, her mother knocked on the door and told her she had a visitor.
The 21-year-old went into the living room where she found the accused looking "nervous", while her parents asked him why their daughter was crying.
The accused allegedly told her parents she had consumed too much alcohol at the night club and he had brought her home.
"He was sitting on the chair and he came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said: 'I'll come back and see you tomorrow.'
"I was petrified and I curled up on the chair. Then he shook my dad’s hand and went away."
The trial, before Lady Smith, continues.

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Replies:

  • Re: Holylands University Area Belfast - Rapist gets five year term -- ben, 05:23:48 04/06/04 Tue
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