An international swimmer raped a young woman after she had consensual sex with his friend, another top athlete, a jury has been told.
Otto Putland, 23, who represented Wales in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, allegedly assaulted the 19-year-old woman after she had consensual sex with his fellow swimmer and friend Ieuan Lloyd.
The woman, a student, said she slept with Lloyd – a two-time Olympian who swam at London 2012 and Rio 2016 – after meeting him at a nightclub.
She claimed he “abandoned” her and welcomed Putland into his bedroom, before switching off the bedroom light and closing the door behind him.
In a police interview read out in court, the woman – who cannot be named – said: “Otto and Ieuan were both having a conversation outside the room with the door open. Otto asked if I was the girl from the club earlier. Otto came in and started taking his shoes off.”
She said she sent a text to a friend. “I thought something might happen,” the woman said.
She continued: “I told him: ‘What are you doing – you can’t just pass me around’. He said: ‘We’re not passing you around.’
“I told him I didn’t want to have sex with him and he kept trying to kiss me. Then he took off his boxers. He asked: ‘Do you want me to put a condom on?’ I was crying and turning my head away from him.”
She said he assaulted her and she blacked out. The woman said the next thing she remembered was being woken by a friend ringing her, only to find herself in bed with Putland having sex with her.
Putland, of Herefordshire, denies rape.
Janet McDonald, prosecuting, said: “She is a lady just out of school, celebrating freedom from exams. She fell for Mr Lloyd, an adonis. The man with a six pack.
“Was she naive? It matters not. With him it was consensual intercourse. But she did not consent with Putland. She did not consent to being passed around. When Mr Lloyd abandoned her, as she said, he was no help to her.”
The allegation was reported to police 16 months later, in July last year. McDonald said this was because the woman – who is now 22 – was “upset and annoyed with herself”.
Putland told police he was introduced to the woman at Lloyd’s home in Cardiff. He said that while he did not know her name or where she was from, the pair had consensual sex after she began flirting with him.
He said: “She spoke normally to me. I was on the bed and moved up so I was against the headboard. She was flirtatious to me and we started kissing.
“She didn’t say anything to make me believe she didn’t want to engage. She hadn’t said anything about being passed around at that point. Had she done so I would not have had sex.
“It lasted about a minute. Then she said she felt like she’d been passed around. She sounded frustrated. I said: ‘OK let’s get your stuff and you can go now’ and I let her out. It wasn’t a memorable evening. I didn’t know her name, where she was from.”
Timothy Evans, defending, told the jury there were “subtleties” involved in the case. He said no text sent by the woman to a friend asking for help had been found, and called witness statements from her friends “ridiculous” owing to their contradicting accounts.
Evans said: “There’s nothing consistent at all in the evidence from the witnesses. Putland does not know why she’s made this up.”
The trial continues.
