A WOMAN alleged to have been raped by a man while another female held her down told a jury her life had been “absolutely devastated” as a result.


The woman, in her 40s, said she had been a strong and confident woman, straight talking and direct.


“I never expected to feel this way about what happened,” she said in evidence over a live television link system at Mold Crown Court yesterday.


“I thought I would be able to handle it. I thought I would be strong. I thought I would be able to push it to one side.


“I really want to be able to do that. But I just could not. I just cannot.


“It has destroyed my self-confidence, my self-esteem, for a year really. My life has been absolutely devastated,” she said.


She said she had not been able to sleep, it went over it in her mind like a video, and had been unable to go out.


However barrister Alastair Edie, for defendant Lisa Rodda, produced Facebook pictures which, he said, showed the complainant posing with various sex toys, at a barbecue shortly after the incident. Another made it look as if she was touching the breasts of two women.


The complainant said that was simply her friends trying to cheer her up. It was a snapshot in time which did not show how she was really feeling.


Hairdresser Paul Kershaw, 34, of Claypit Lane, Rowton, Chester and Lisa Rodda, 40, of Sidmouth Road, Ashton-upon-Mersey, near Sale, both deny rape and digital penetration.


Mr Edie said the complainant and Rodda would speak about sexual affairs they had had with men. Cross-examined, she conceded she did have relationships with men which were not serious.


She said one of the men involved in Facebook banter was a boyfriend, another she had dated and the reference to his genitals was a joke.

The third she had never met but he was a friend she spoke to by phone after meeting on a dating website.


In evidence, she insisted she was sexually assaulted and later raped by the defendants at a house in the Hawarden area after a night out in Chester during race night in June 2010.


The defendants went into her bedroom, Rodda had pulled her bedclothes back when she was naked, held her arms and told Kershaw to indecently assault her, which he did.


Later, Rodda put her hand over her mouth, pushed her head into a pillow and held her down on a sofa while Kershaw raped her.


She denied suggestions by Mr Edie that she wanted to have sex with Kershaw and Rodda left the room before she did so.


Cross-examined by Jonathan Duffy, for Kershaw, she denied she had sex willingly with him.


After it was over the complainant agreed she went outside and had a cigarette with both defendants.


Asked why on earth she had done that, she said: “Once he penetrated me, I was so shocked and so stunned. I just shut down. My whole mind shut down. I just did as she told me.

I was so shocked. I could not believe what had happened. I was absolutely stunned.”


The complainant said she was sober and did not drink alcohol but the defendants was extremely drunk and were “absolutely off their faces”.

They were “completely out of control” and “totally unpredictable”.
 

Asked why she had not called out, she said she was in an extremely vulnerable position.
 

Her boyfriend was in the house, he had also been drinking and any man faced with such a situation would probably react violently in that situation, she said.
 

There was also a child in the house and she did not want the boy to see what was going on.
 

Prosecutor Simon Mills said the defendants lost their inhibitions in drink and treated the complainant as a sexual play-thing.

The case is proceeding