A young woman has alleged that she woke up to find a man “thrusting” his penis into her mouth after falling asleep while he was giving her a lift home from a night out in Galway.

The woman told a Central Criminal Court jury that she first encountered the accused man (46) as she sat on a park bench in a distressed state having left her friends in a Galway nightclub.

The woman said she spoke with the man for about 15 minutes on the bench and recalled he had seemed concerned about her and gave her his jacket.

She said she took his offer of a lift home, got into the front passenger seat of his van and the last thing she remembered was seeing a hotel on the route before waking up with his penis in her mouth.

The man, who can't be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to one charge of oral rape at a Galway location in the early hours of November 5, 2015.

The complainant told Paul Burns SC, prosecuting, that the accused man was standing up in the van opposite her with his right leg on the seat beside her and his penis in her mouth.

“He was thrusting his penis into my mouth”, she told the jury.

“I pushed him off and I started screaming. I told him that I was going to tell,” she said.

She described how she was “crying hysterically and screaming” and that she ran around to the back of the van to get the registration number.

The complainant told Mr Burns that as the man sped off, she ran to a nearby house “and just started ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door, just kept saying the number plate.”

She told the jury a family answered the door, she told them what had happened and they rang the gardaí. She said the fly on her jeans was down and that she only noticed later that her bra was folded in also.

She said she had been “very upset” because of various stressors in her life when she went to sit by herself on the park bench.

The then 20-year-old woman said she “didn't feel unsafe” on the drive in the man's vehicle, but was “comforted” by having a jacket and being in out of the rain and cold.

She denied when Barry White SC, defending, suggested that she had put her arm around his client while on the park bench.

She further denied “chatting away” with the accused on the journey, or telling him he could drive on to see a view of the city lights.

She said it was “not true” when Mr White put it to her that his client maintains they kissed passionately at the view location and that she had performed consensual oral sex on him.

Counsel suggested to her that she “freaked” and started repeating “I've a boyfriend”, to which she replied: “None of this happened”.

She further denied closing her eyes, putting her head back and being unresponsive, before springing “bolt upright” and becoming angry at the accused.

Another witness told Mr Burns that she and her parents answered the door to the complainant and saw she was crying with “makeup all down her face”.

The witness said the complainant initially didn't make much eye contact, but gave an account of the alleged assault after a few minutes.

The woman said she noticed the complainant's zip had been fully down on her jeans, while the top button was done. She said the complainant was repeating the vehicle's registration when she first came into the house.

The trial continues before Ms Justice Eileen Creedon and a jury.

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