Teenager said she tried to contact friends during alleged rape

An 18-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a schoolmate after a night out in Co Donegal has said she tried to ask friends for help after the incident.
The girl was being cross-examined about texts and calls she made and received from her friends on the night of March 18, 2016.
A 19-year-old has denied one count of rape and one of oral rape of the girl in a Co Donegal town following St Patrick’s Day celebrations on March 18, 2016. He cannot be named for legal reasons
The girl has previously told the court that she met the boy in a take away and that they went for a walk and he raped her behind a nearby building.
On the fourth day of the trial at the Central Criminal Court, Michael O’Higgins SC, defending, asked the girl why she sent a few texts to a friend in the early hours saying, “I don’t know what happened”.
She replied, “I just wanted somebody to be able to help.”
When asked by counsel if it was possible that she didn’t, in fact, know what had happened, the girl replied, “I know exactly what happened, but I also know that at that time I was in shock.”
“It wasn’t easy to say,” the girl added, who broke down in tears several times during the cross-examination.
When asked if she had told her friends “something of a white lie” by saying she didn’t know what had happened, the girl said she didn’t think it was fair to call it a white lie.
“I was trying to ask for help but I couldn’t bring myself to say what it was,” she explained.
The girl was also asked about a phone call she made to her friend during the alleged incident at 1:15 am, when she says the accused had briefly left the scene to check out a car that had stopped at the front of the building.
In a statement to gardaí, the girl said she rang her friend and was telling her she didn’t know what to do, that she was with the accused and she didn’t know how to get out of there.
“She didn’t really understand what I was talking about and asked me what’s wrong, what happened. I hung up then because (the accused) had come back,” the statement read.
When asked in court why she had hung up the phone, she replied, “I thought that it would annoy him that I called her.”
Counsel for the defence then asked why she subsequently told gardaí in a separate statement that she had got no answer when she rung her friend, and whether her evidence was therefore unreliable.
“I was in a very different head-space then than I am now,” she said, “I don’t think these small inconsistencies make it unreliable.”
Counsel continued to press her and said that a call to a friend in the middle of such an event was very important.
“Not for me, compared to the event that took place. Everything else compared to that was small,” she said.
Mr O’Higgins also quizzed the girl as to why she had changed her Facebook profile picture the next day to a photo from the night before showing herself and her friends outside a shop.
“At that time I was still in shock. I was trying to move on with things and pretend this didn’t happen,” she replied.
The trial continues before Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy and a jury of eight men and four women.