A woman who attended an afterparty at Paddy Jackson’s home said the rugby star “shook his head” and denied taking part in a threesome the morning after the incident.
The woman went back to Jackson’s Oakleigh Park home in south Belfast in the early hours of Tuesday, 28 June, 2016 with two friends.
After having too much to drink, the woman stayed in an upstairs room in Jackson’s home while her two friends left in a taxi around 4.25am.
She said she woke up on a sofa the next morning with Stuart Olding lying beside her, and after retrieving her phone, she called one of her friends who had also been at the party.
When asked about the conversation she had with her friend that morning, the woman said her friend told her she had walked into a bedroom and saw people having sex.
Giving evidence at Belfast Crown Court, the woman revealed how her friend said she walked in on a threesome and that she closed the door. She also said her friend told her this in a “jokey manner.”
She said she told Jackson that morning about what her friend told her about a threesome. And when asked how Jackson reacted, she said: “He just shook his head and just said ‘no, that didn’t happen.’
“I thought he knew what I was talking about, but because he shook his head, I didn’t pursue it any further.”
She said that after vomiting at the party, she went to bed. She also confirmed that nothing physical occurred between herself and Olding, as she didn’t know he was lying beside her until she woke up at around 9am.
When asked about the party she attended, she described it as “all quite innocent fun.”
Telling the court she had never met the woman who also attended the party and who claimed she was raped that night by Jackson and Olding, she described her as “quite nice … quiet.”
Also giving evidence earlier in the day was another young woman who attended the party with her two friends.
This witness said she went upstairs with a third woman to look for their friend so they could all go home.
She said that as she and her friend were walking up the stairs to look for their other friend “we could hear some type of noises coming from a room.” She said her friend opened the door then closed it again after a few seconds.
When asked what her friend saw in the bedroom, the witness said “she said in a joking way “Oh my God, I have just seen a threesome.”‘
When asked to elaborate, she said her friend told her it involved Jackson, Olding and the woman at the centre of the claims. The witness added: “She (her friend) said Paddy had joked about joining in.”
When she was asked by Jackson’s barrister, Brendan Kelly QC, that when they went back down the stairs “did you have any concern as to what was going on in that bedroom?”, the woman replied “no.”
She was also asked about leaving her friend in the house overnight. She said that after looking for their friend, the two women went back downstairs and called a taxi.
She was asked if they had “any concern” about leaving their friend in the house, to which she replied: “No, we felt safe the whole time.”
And when asked if she “feared” for her friend’s safety, she said “no, definitely not.”
Reporting by Ashleigh McDonald for M&M News Services
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