Metropolitan police officer accused of rape goes on trial in Essex

A Metropolitan police officer accused of raping a woman told her he thought she was “playing hard to get” when she told him no, a court has been told.

She said that she and James Geoghegan kissed consensually in her bedroom, but that he then pulled her pyjama shorts down.

In a police video played at Chelmsford crown court, the woman said: “I pulled them back up, and said, ‘No. Stop.’ He then pulled them back down.”

Geoghegan, 27, of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, then allegedly raped the woman at her home in Essex in December 2018. “I just remember lying there looking at the ceiling, thinking, ‘This is disgusting,’” she said.

The woman said he fell asleep afterwards and that she cried. She added that she later asked him whether he understood why she was upset and whether he remembered her asking him to stop.

“He said, ‘Yes, I thought you were just playing around,’” the woman said, and that Geoghegan told her: “I thought you were just playing hard to get and being flirty.”

“He’s a lot stronger and bigger than me and pulled them [her shorts] off,” she said. “I personally think if somebody says stop, it means stop.”

She said they had been drinking on the night in question. “There’s bits missing as there was quite a lot of drink involved.”

The prosecution barrister, Wayne Cleaver, told the court: “The prosecution case is simple: [the victim] said no and [the victim] said stop, and that is exactly what she meant.” He said the defendant “disregarded her limits and decided instead to press on”.

“It was totally unreasonable. He had no reasonable belief that she was consenting, less still that she was inviting sexual intercourse with him,” he said.

“It may be that he felt that he had waited long enough and this was his opportunity to go all the way without any real regard to what she actually wanted and to what she was clearly indicating.”

He said that as a police officer, Geoghegan had “professional insight” on where “sexual boundaries may be crossed”.

Geoghegan denies a charge of rape. The trial continues.