Chef denies raping woman after night out in Southport

Chef denies raping woman after night out in Southport

A 19-year-old woman who had consensual sex with a man she met for the first time earlier that night was then allegedly raped by him, a jury heard, Tuesday 16 November.

The couple climbed into bed together at her friend’s home, had sex and lay together happily chatting – but the situation then soured, Liverpool Crown Court was told.

For after Adam Clifford and the woman began kissing and she was performing a sex act on him she looked up and saw he was “messing about with his phone”, claimed Charlotte Kenny, prosecuting.

“Not unsurprisingly she asked him what he was doing and told him she no longer wanted to continue with the sexual activity and no longer felt comfortable with it. She was concerned might have been trying to photograph her or record the act in some sort of way.

“At that point things took a bad turn,” she alleged.

Miss Kenny told the jury of six women and six men that Clifford forced her continue with the sex act on him . She managed to stop him and told him she felt uncomfortable about it because of him using the phone and wanted sexual activity to stop.

“He would not take ‘no’ for answer,” claimed Miss Kenny.

Clifford got hold of her throat with one hand and placed one leg between hers and raped her, describing it as  “fun.”

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, continued telling him to stop but he then raped her anally. When he loosened her grip on her she managed to leave the room and went to her friend’s adjacent bedroom and told her she wanted Clifford and his companion, who was in bed with her friend, to leave.

She told her friend, “I didn’t want to, I told him to stop.” The friend confronted Clifford asking why her distressed friend was crying and he replied, “I don’t know,” claimed Miss Kenny.

The friend asked why he had made her do it and “he put up his hands and said, ‘I’m sorry,’” she added.

The two men left and the police, alerted shortly after the attack by the friend, arrested him later that day, August 26 last year. He gave a prepared statement denying rape.

Clifford,  a chef, of Montagu Road, Formby, has pleaded not guilty to three offences of rape.

The alleged victim told the court how she and two girl friends met Clifford and his two friends at the Southport Casino and they all later went to the Bar Humbug for more drinks before she and her friend went to the friend’s home with Clifford and one of his friends by taxi.

She said that he told her his name was Andy and that he worked as a chef at Formby Hall golf club

Her friend’s parents were away and her friend showed  her the spare room where she could stay and Clifford offered to help make the unmade bed and they then began kissing and had consensual sex.

She agreed that later she initiated sexual activity by performing a sex act on him but then saw he was using his phone and she did not consent to what happened after that point.

The woman, now aged 20, claimed that she told her friend that Clifford had “taken advantage” of her and admitted that her friend had been the first to use the word rape. She also told how the friend claimed that she had also been raped that night.

Cross-examined by Martine Snowden, defending, she denied that the two women had decided to say they had been raped when they had not.

She also denied a suggestion that afterwards she went to the toilet and “changed her mind and regretted” what had happened. She also denied that her friend had suggested what had happened was rape.

The case continues