£100,000 council boss accused of raping colleague who was 'too drunk to give consent'



Accused: Byron Davies is standing trial in north Wales charged with the rape of a younger colleague

A council chief bought a 26-year-old colleague drinks then took her back to his apartment and raped her, a court was told yesterday.



Byron Davies, 52, met the married woman at a hotel bar where she was having a drink after a meal with a friend.



She told police her next clear memory after that was waking up naked in her boss’s bed early the next morning.



Davies, who earns £100,000 a year as chief executive of Conwy council in North Wales, is said to have asked the woman whether she wanted ‘a quick one’ before they went to work. She refused and fled, a court heard.



The jury at Mold Crown Court was told he couldn’t have failed to notice she was too drunk to give genuine consent to sex.



But Davies claims she willingly went back to his flat, agreed to have sex and let him take off her clothes.



However the court heard the council boss claims she willingly went back to his flat after asking whether he was staying at the hotel, kissing then agreeing to sex and letting him take her clothes off.



Opening the case, prosecuting barrister John Philpotts said that rape took many forms, from the hooded predator who broke into a woman’s home to a man who raped his wife after repeated consensual sex over the years.



‘This is a case which falls somewhere between those two extreme examples,’ he said.



The alleged victim told police she had bumped into her boss at the Castle Hotel in Conwy after an evening out with a male friend with the knowledge of her husband.



The friends had two or three bottles of lager each at a pub after work before having a curry and two bottles of wine between them.



While waiting at the hotel bar for her friend to be picked up by his fiancee, she ordered half a pint of six per cent strength Belgian beer, the court was told.



But when she was left alone, she spotted Davies, who was drinking by himself, and approached him, asking if he was the boss of the council.



They started chatting, and he bought her at least one more lager, at which point she said she had begun to feel she had reached her limit.



'He didn't come across as sleazy or anything, he was just chilled and very relaxed,' she said in a video interview played to the jury.

She said she recalled very little about later being in her boss’s flat and must have passed out.



Mr Philpotts told the jury the woman ‘may have behaved unwisely that night, she may have drunk more than was good for her’.



But he concluded: ‘We suggest that he must have been aware that she was incapable because of her state of intoxication to consent genuinely to have sex.’

Evening meal: The alleged victim ate at the Raj Indian restaurant on the night of the incident

She said she remembered being in his car and then being in the kitchen of his apartment in Llandudno.



'At one point I remember he was kissing me and I was pushing him off,' she said. 'He kept grabbing me and I told him: "I am a married woman, I am not interested, you have the wrong opinion of me".



'Why on earth would I want to kiss him? He's late 40s, early 50s. I can remember him kissing me and like lots of saliva and I was telling him to get off. Maybe I came across as too friendly.'



She said at this point she thinks she must have passed out, and the next thing she remembered was Davies tapping on the shoulder at about six o'clock the next morning, at which she discovered she was practically naked, and asking if she wanted 'a quick one'.



'Although she was disorientated and struggling to work out where she was, she knew perfectly well what he meant,' said Mr Philpotts.



'She immediately got out of bed telling him that he had the wrong idea about her.'



After dressing and leaving, she tried contacting her husband before calling in sick at work.



She initially told her husband she had awoken fully clothed but that nothing had happened, but after revealing the truth he went to police. She was examined and found to have bruising to her thigh and knee, and Davies was arrested.



Chance encounter: The alleged victim bumped into the council boss at the Castle Hotel

The 'happily married' alleged victim told the police that she was just 'a really, really chatty, social person' who would never have knowingly gone home with someone for sex.



She thought her drink may have been spiked, but Mr Philpotts said there was no evidence of that.



The court was told Davies admitted taking her back to his flat, making her a mug of tea then kissing her. He claimed he asked her twice if she wanted to have sex before they went to bed.



Cross-examined by David Williams, the alleged victim admitted she had once cut her throat with a camping knife after an argument with her husband at a friend's wedding.



He accused her of being 'a wilful person, who lacks judgement, who is impulsive and capable of hurting people if you want to'.



She retorted that it was 'nasty' to bring it up, saying it had just been a short period of instability.



She admitted she could be flirtatious but denied that in CCTV pictures showing her leaving the restaurant with her arms around her male friend, his hand was on her bottom.



Davies, who gave his address as Yelverton in Devon and was suspended following the allegation, denies raping the woman on March 23 last year.



The case continues.