Two soldiers set off for a nightclub after allegedly raping a colleague who was found naked apart from her cardigan outside her accommodation block, a trial has heard.
The pair were in a taxi on the way to the club when they took a phone call saying Anne-Marie Ellement was upset and returned to camp, where they were arrested.
Jeremy Jones and Thomas Fulton, both 28, deny raping Royal Military police Cpl Ellement at a barracks in Germany in November 2009 – two years before the alleged victim killed herself.
Giving evidence, Jones said the three had engaged in consensual sex and though Ellement had been drinking, he insisted she realised what she was doing.
Jones, who has since left the army, told a panel at Bulford court martial centre in Wiltshire that the three had been drinking in the corporals’ mess. “I remember the three of us dancing around,” he said.
They all ended up in Jones’s room. He said Ellement was not so drunk she did not have the “capacity” to realise what she was doing.
“She was fully aware of what was going on and she made the decision and the three of us were all excited to go back to the room,” he said.
“She was a willing participant. She was enjoying herself. All three of us were giggling and laughing. I know it was longer than half an hour. It just fizzled out. Sex has got to end and it ended.” Jones said that Ellement did not express any “unhappiness” at what had gone on.
Afterwards, Jones told the court, he asked Ellement to take off his blue hooded jumper which she was wearing and instead she put back on her brown cardigan.
Jones said he suggested to Fulton that the pair of them go to a club. “She was a little bit upset with me for suggesting town. Obviously she left,” he said.
They took a taxi to a nightclub but received a phone call on the way telling them to return to the camp, where they were arrested on suspicion of raping her.
Justin Rouse QC, for Jones, asked him: “At any time during this intercourse with Anne-Marie Ellement did you rape her?” Jones replied: “No.”
Ellement, naked apart from her brown cardigan, was discovered crying and with muddy feet outside her accommodation at 1.37am.
In a lengthy video, Ellement, then aged 28, said she had not consented to sex with Fulton or Jones. “I don’t want to get someone accused of something they hadn’t done but I know that I didn’t want to have sex,” she said.
After leaving the army, Jones joined a close protection team guarding EU police officers in Afghanistan. Fulton, who has also left the army, has already given evidence and insisted he did not force Ellement to have sex. He has conceded that he verbally abused Ellement that night.
A panel of civil servants and senior military officers is hearing the trial, which continues.
