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	Priest Raped Me Three Times, Woman Claims in Court By Tomas Mac Ruairi Irish Independent May 26, 2006 http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3? ca=9&si=1620977&issue_id=14104 A DONEGAL woman who claims a priest raped her three times, made the allegations formally in a letter to the bishop in recent years. Yesterday the woman told a jury at the Central Criminal Court that her best friend and her sister had both warned her not to go near the accused when she revealed earlier incidents in full or part to them. The 48-year-old accused has denied three charges of raping the woman on dates in 1985 and one charge of indecently assaulting her in 1984. The woman agreed with Gerry O'Brien defending, that she phoned the accused in 1990 and asked for money but denied she told him she was pregnant and wanted the money to have an abortion. She told Denis Vaughan Buckley prosecuting, that on the day the school Christmas holidays began in December 1984, the accused offered to drive her home but en route drove to a pier where he moved over to her side of the car and kissed her as well as touching her. She told this to her best friend who advised her not to go near the accused again. She also later told her sister about this incident. The woman claimed that the accused raped her for the first time in the toilet at the sacristy. She thought she was going to the church for a reading rehearsal but found the accused working on the amplification. She wanted to use the toilet and planned to go to an outside facility but the accused said she should use the toilet in the sacristy and then came in when she was there. She stood up against the wall on her right, with her back to it and he raped her standing there. The second alleged rape happened when she and her friend were late for confession and the accused said he would hear theirs in the sacristy. She backed against a wall where he pulled down her trousers and kissed her while telling her he was "very excited". She was becoming frightened while he repeated he was "very excited" and raped her. The woman said the third rape happened in a bedroom in the Parochial House after the accused had sent for her. He took her upstairs to his bedroom and told her he wanted to experience sex in a bed and then raped her. "A 13-year-old is not suspicious that anything like that would happen, " she said. "When I left home that first afternoon I didn't know he was going to rape me in the toilet of the sacristy." The woman denied Mr O'Brien's suggestion that none of the incidents she claimed had ever happened. "I'm sorry to say they did," she replied. The hearing continues before Mr Justice Philip O'Sullivan and a jury of seven men and five women.
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