A police detective raped a woman in a hotel room while he was attending a conference about seizing the proceeds of crime, a court has heard.
Nicholas Doherty, a detective constable, denies raping the alleged victim but admits having consensual sex with her in the early hours at a hotel in Warwickshire.
A jury at Warwick crown court was told that Doherty, a member of Cumbria police who lives in Barrow-in-Furness, was not traced until a year after the alleged attack.
The woman told police she had been raped and left with bruising at a hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon after meeting a man, who she did not know, in a pub.
Simon Phillips, prosecuting, told jurors she claimed to have gone to the hotel room with the man because she wanted a cup of tea rather than an alcoholic drink.
Phillips added that the alleged victim, who had been drinking wine but was not “out of control”, recalled visiting a bathroom and sitting on a bed drinking tea. But the woman’s next memory, the court heard, was being aware in the early hours that she was naked on the bed with the man lying on top of her.
The woman claims to have been restrained by her attacker as she was sexually assaulted, before he “let her go” after she pleaded for him to stop.
Phillips said that although the victim made a complaint a few days after the incident in March 2012, Doherty was not tracked down until 18 months later.
When he was interviewed in November 2013, the court heard, Doherty, 42, said his memory was poor due to the passage of time but he was able to remember having consensual sex with a woman at the relevant time.
Phillips said: “He suggested that when the sex ended, he just left the room. He accepted holding her wrists during sex and he accepted probably causing the injuries during consensual sex.”
In a video interview conducted shortly after she made her complaint, the woman said she could remember sitting in the hotel room talking to the man near a mug of tea, and then her memory became “hazy”.
In the interview, which was played to the jury, she told the police officer interviewing her: “Everything gets a bit hazy and I don’t know why it’s hazy. I have drunk more than that in the past and not had a problem.
“The next thing that I recall, it was completely black in the room, apart from the shadows on the curtains. Somebody was trying to kiss me and I assumed it was him and then I realised that I wasn’t wearing anything.”
The woman told police that she had informed the man that he was hurting her, but he responded by squeezing her wrists tightly and kneeling on her thigh.
Doherty denies two counts of rape, one of attempted rape and a charge of assault by penetration. The trial continues.
