A former university student has told a court in Edinburgh she was raped at her home by a stranger as she began a rare civil action against her alleged assailant.

Miss M said her alleged assailant, Stephen Coxen, from Bury in Lancashire, forced her to have penetrative and oral sex after she had been drinking heavily at a party during freshers’ week at the University of St Andrews.

The woman, who was a second year psychology student at the time of the alleged rape at her flat in September 2013, is suing Coxen for nearly £100,000 in damages and costs at Edinburgh sheriff court.

She launched the civil action last year following a rape trial in November 2015, when a jury found the case against Coxen not proven, a Scottish verdict which acquits the accused but stops short of finding them not guilty. Coxen had denied all the charges and is defending her civil action.

During four hours of testimony on the first day of her action against him, Miss M alleged that Coxen had accompanied her home from a nightclub before attacking her in her bedroom.



With Coxen watching her account from the public gallery in court, she said she had had a considerable amount to drink during a friend’s house-warming party that evening including wine, vodka, champagne and cider.

She said she remembered very little about her movements after leaving the party until she found herself at the gate to her building with Coxen later that night. She believes he may have been sitting next to her at the nightclub.

She told the judge, Sheriff Robert Weir QC, she had tried to alert her flatmates by ringing the flat buzzer repeatedly. No one answered. Coxen then became very impatient after she fumbled her keys when she tried to unlock the door, grabbing the keys after she dropped them.

She then remembered waking up to find herself in her bed unclothed, with Coxen, she alleged, having intercourse with her before he then forced her into having oral sex. He had grabbed her jaw and the back of her head, she said, tugging at her hair.

In tears at times during her testimony, Miss M needed several pauses and breaks in her evidence while she composed herself.

She said at one point during the alleged incident she had tried to pull herself up, and was unable to: “I just remembered looking at the person in the room … [I] wouldn’t say it was a smirk. I don’t know if it was a grin or a smirk” on his face.

Questioned by her counsel, Simon di Rollo QC, Miss M said that after the alleged assault ended, she realised there was blood on her and across the mattress and nearby window sill. She alleged Coxen remarked: “What the fuck, that’s disgusting.”

Miss M further alleged that when she woke up the following morning, her mobile phone and purse were missing from the flat. After contacting the friends she had been out with the previous evening, she discovered a friend of hers had taken her purse for safe-keeping.

Her iPhone was then detected by a friend using its location tracker at another property in the town later that day. After a message was sent to the phone, it was returned by a friend of Coxen’s called Dominic Hurst. He claimed to her that Coxen had found it on the street, but since Coxen was no longer in St Andrews, Hurst was returning it instead.

Miss M said it took her weeks to discuss the incident with her GP and more than four months before she told her family, while they were gathered at her parents home that Christmas.

The court also heard from Sean Laverick, a consultant maxilofacial surgeon at Ninewells hospital in Dundee, to provide expert testimony about damage to her tongue which required surgery. He said scar tissue strongly suggested she had suffered a blunt force injury to her tongue, consistent with it being crushed by a violent trauma.

The civil action is expected to last eight days, with the sheriff likely to deliver his judgment at a later date.