A MAN who denies raping a woman while she slept after a night out in Colchester fled a flat when she woke up and started screaming, a court heard.

Shaun Western, 23, is standing trial more than four years after the alleged attack in 2018.

He had been on a night out at Walkabout, in Colchester, before the pair went to a friend’s address after the bar closed at around 2am.

A jury at Chelmsford Crown Court was told there are “rival accounts” from the complainant and Western.

The jury was told the complainant was “intoxicated to the extent she was falling over on the way home”.

At her friend’s home, she was put to bed after she was sick.

The complainant remembers waking up to Western on top of her, having sex with her.

Christopher Kerr, prosecuting, said: “She thinks that was what woke her up.”

The prosecutor said the complainant began to protest, so Western “jumped off, started pulling his trousers on and said something like ‘you wanted this’.”

Western fled the flat as others rushed into the room to investigate.

The complainant’s friends say she was “crying hysterically”.

Western, of Edward Paxman Gardens, Colchester, was later arrested at his home.

He denies rape, telling the police he and the complainant had kissed earlier on that night.

He told police “she had drunk a lot, but was not that bad”.

Western said he had got into bed with the sleeping complainant and she woke up, after which a conversation was had about sex.

Western told officers they began to have sex, she “began to drop off again”, so he “got off her”.

He said the complainant awoke and began to shout at him.

Mr Kerr said: “He said she was raising her voice and he started to panic, because he didn’t want a confrontation with the others in the flat, so he put his jeans on and he began to leave.”

Western told police he left the flat and went home.

“Essentially, his case is she was consenting or if she wasn’t consenting, at least he reasonably believed she was consenting,” added Mr Kerr.

The jury will be shown CCTV footage which shows the complainant and Western chatting in the smoking area outside Walkabout.

The jury heard the footage “appears” to show them kissing.

Mr Kerr said: “You’ll have to apply your judgement as to what is happening in that footage and whether it is significant or not.

“If [the complainant’s] account is true about what happened later, then the fact they were kissing earlier on can of course not begin to justify what happened.”

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