A British Army serviceman accused of violently raping a fellow soldier after a boozy night warned her ‘I tend to get rough when drinking’, a court martial has heard.
Sapper Thomas Herrington, 19, allegedly carried the woman to his room while she was ‘out cold’ after a night of heavy drinking before attacking her.
The court was previously told she feared for her life after making an escape attempt only to be dragged back into bed by her hair and tied down using a dressing gown belt.
Spr Herrington, who denies the allegations, claims the woman ‘liked kinky sex’ and being ‘roughly handled’, and that he wondered about her ‘pain threshold’.
The pair were said to have struck up a sexual relationship after meeting two weeks earlier and began the evening drinking in his room before heading to a party at a male colleague’s room nearby.
But by the end of the night she had passed out on one of the beds and was ‘so intoxicated she couldn’t give consent’, prosecutors told Bulford Military Court, Wiltshire, on Tuesday.
In a recording of the alleged victim’s police recording played in court, she said her body felt ‘like jelly’ while he got into bed with her and remembered him ‘swinging’ her on top of him to have sex.
She said she ‘knew what was going on but had no strength in me to fight back’ and heard him make comments that showed he ‘knew I was unconscious’.
After seeing him fetch the belt, she says she began fearing the ‘much bigger’ male soldier ‘could kill me’, adding: ‘I was kicking and screaming and by this point I was thinking, if I don’t get him off of me now I might not leave this room.’
Giving evidence on Wednesday, Spr Herrington said: ‘We had spoken about interests and liked rough, kinky sex. She said she liked choking, hair pulling, the odd bit of spanking and being roughly-handled.
He said he had ‘strong feelings’ for her, adding: ‘I had spoken to her about developing more of a relationship type of thing, but she said she didn’t feel the same way and it was just a bit of fun, and I completely accepted that.
‘There was another female in the troop that was sleeping with other male sappers and she made a name for herself. When [the alleged victim] spoke to me about it she wanted to keep it secret so she didn’t have that reputation.’
The soldier said he and his colleague met most days, regularly eating together, watching Netflix and drinking.
He said she sent him sexual messages during the party and claimed they had a ‘passionate’ sexual encounter prior to the time of the alleged incident before returning to the party.
Later on, he carried her back to her room before heading back to the party so ‘they did not raise suspicion’, and after a further interval came back and locked the door before having further consensual sex.
He said: “She said go back to the party for a little bit then come back. I locked the door because we were going to have coitus, I didn’t lock the door because I was going to have sex with an unconscious woman.
‘I said “are you OK?” and she said “I’m fine”. I wanted to make sure she was responsive and that she was OK.
‘I told her if you don’t want to do this just tell me to stop. We had spoken about how I tend to get a bit more rough when drinking and I didn’t know her pain threshold so I wanted to make sure she was OK.
‘I was not dragging her around by her hair, I was caressing her body. She was enjoying it, she was moaning.’
Spr Herrington said the woman suddenly ‘jolted forward’, got up, and ran out of the room naked. Initially thinking she had got up to ‘get restraints from his wardrobe’, he told the hearing he was ‘completely stunned’ and ‘didn’t know what I had done wrong’.
He added: ‘As far as I was concerned I didn’t rape her… There were so signs of struggling, that’s why I was confused.’
Spr Herrington, of 1 Royal School of Military Engineering regiment, denies two charges of rape and one charge of assault by penetration and claims she played an ‘active and voluntary role’. The trial continues.
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