Metropolitan Police officer ‘raped woman after night out,’ court hears

James Geoghegan, 27, from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, is accused of raping the woman on December 12, 2018 after a night out
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Matt Watts25 October 2021

A Metropolitan Police officer raped a woman who said no to sex before telling her “I thought you were just playing hard to get”, a court has heard.

James Geoghegan, 27, from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, is accused of raping the woman on December 12, 2018 after a night out.

On Monday, jurors at Chelmsford Crown Court were told the victim returned to her home in Essex, with Geoghegan at around 3am after they had been drinking, the court heard.

Geoghegan had decided to sleep there instead of returning to his home in Enfield, north London, before following the victim into her room “uninvited” later that morning as she was undressing.

Wayne Cleaver, prosecuting, told the court Geoghegan proceeded to try to take off the victim’s pyjama bottoms, to which she replied “stop, think about your girlfriend”.

Jurors were told that she repeated this several times to try to “discourage him”, as she was “not interested in intercourse”, but this was ignored.

After gesturing that she was not interested in going further, the alleged rape took place on her bed, the court heard.

In a police video interview played in court, the woman said she kissed Geoghegan in her bedroom and it was consensual but he then pulled her pyjama shorts down.

The woman said: “I pulled them back up, said, ‘No. Stop’. He then pulled them back down.”

Giving evidence in court from behind a screen, the woman said: “I held on to my shorts for dear life to the point where my fingers hurt.”

When she tried to stop him touching her he raped her, the court heard.

The woman told jurors she “put the blame on myself for the first couple of days” after the alleged rape.

“I just remember lying there looking at the ceiling thinking, ‘This is disgusting’,” she said, in her police video interview.

She said the defendant fell asleep afterwards and she cried. She added that she later asked him, “Do you understand why I’m upset?”, and, “Do you remember me asking (you) to stop?”

“He said, ‘Yes, I thought you were just playing around’,” the woman said.

She added that Geoghegan told her: “I thought you were just playing hard to get and being flirty.” She went on: “He just said he’s sorry then he left.”

The woman said: “We were kissing and that was all consensual, mucking around for a bit, laughing. He was saying he’s going to marry me one day.”

Wayne Cleaver, prosecuting, told the court: “The prosecution case is simple: (the victim) said ‘no’ and (the victim) said ‘stop’ and that is exactly what she meant.”

He said the defendant “disregarded her limits and decided instead to press on”.

“It was totally unreasonable, he had no reasonable belief that she was consenting, less still that she was inviting sexual intercourse with him,” Mr Cleaver said.

“It may be that he felt that he had waited long enough and this was his opportunity to go all the way without any real regard to what she actually wanted and to what she was clearly indicating.”

He said that as a police officer, Geoghegan had “professional insight” on where “sexual boundaries may be crossed”. Geoghegan denies rape. The trial continues.

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