A Boston jury has found a Dublin firefighter Terence Crosbie guilty of raping a woman in a hotel room he shared with a colleague. <\/p>\n
The jury of six men and six women found Crosbie (39) guilty of raping a 29-year-old attorney in the lead up to St Patrick\u2019s Day weekend after 4\u00bd days of arguments and after more than 15 hours of deliberation. He faces up to 20 years in sentencing. <\/p>\n
A number of male supporters broke into tears as the verdict was delivered, while Crosbie\u2019s wife kept her head in her lap. <\/p>\n
The conviction comes after a previous trial ended in a hung jury. A sentencing hearing has been set for October 30th. <\/p>\n
Crosbie and the victim testified in both trials, with Crosbie denying that he ever touched the victim and insisting that his bed was empty when he returned to his hotel room. <\/p>\n
The victim said she met Crosbie\u2019s colleague, Liam O\u2019Brien, at The Black Rose bar, and went with Mr O\u2019Brien back to the Omni Parker hotel. She said she was not aware that Mr O\u2019Brien had a roommate, and did not remember meeting Crosbie briefly in the room when she and Mr O\u2019Brien entered. She said she and Mr O\u2019Brien had consensual sex, and then she went to the bathroom and left the light on. When she returned Mr O\u2019Brien was spread out in the bed like a \u201cstarfish\u201d and snoring, so she testified that she crawled in the other bed and went to sleep. <\/p>\n
She said she woke up to an Irishman she did not know actively raping her, telling her that she \u201cliked it\u201d and that his \u201cfriend,\u201d Mr O\u2019Brien, couldn\u2019t give it to her because he was \u201ca loser\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing? Stop,\u201d she told the assailant, according to testimony. \u201cHe was continuing to put his weight on me, he was continuing to penetrate me, he didn\u2019t stop,\u201d she said. She testified that she was then able to manoeuvre her feet to the ground and collect her clothes while Crosbie chased her around the room. She made it to the bathroom door, dressed, escaped through the hotel door, texted a friend what happened and immediately went to the hospital to report the assault. <\/p>\n
Crosbie\u2019s defence team repeatedly questioned the woman\u2019s account of events, sighting her alcohol consumption; use of psychiatric medication; and that when reporting the assault she could not remember Mr O\u2019Brien\u2019s first or last name; believed her assailant was about her height \u2013 when Crosbie is significantly taller \u2013 and did not remember the assailant having tattoos. <\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t touch her,\u201d Crosbie testified. <\/p>\n
Crosbie and Mr O\u2019Brien had travelled to Boston with more than 10 of his colleagues to march in the St Patrick\u2019s Day parade. Crosbie testified that he was kissing another unidentified woman at The Black Rose, but stated that he declined her invitation to go home with her \u2013 countering the state\u2019s argument that Crosbie was out on the prowl, and recently rejected, on the night of the assault. <\/p>\n
He said he was in the room when the victim and Mr O\u2019Brien arrived, that he left to wait in a chair in the hallway, and when he returned the lights were out and the bed was empty. He testified that he heard a woman collecting her clothing and leave, but he did not engage with her in any way. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors pointed out that when Crosbie was initially questioned by police, he asked if the complainant <\/b>had asked if someone had \u201cpinned her down\u201d in the bed without having any previous knowledge of the details of her allegation. He also asked police if his DNA could have got on the complainant <\/b>due to his masturbating in the bed the previous morning \u2013 the prosecution noted that Crosbie had not yet arrived in Boston the morning before the assault. <\/p>\n
DNA evidence revealed the presence of two male contributors on the complainant, one of whom was Mr O\u2019Brien. The identity of the second contributor could not be confirmed. <\/p>\n
Assistant district attorney Erin Murphy argued that the complainant\u2019s memory gaps were not \u201cmeaningful,\u201d Crosbie\u2019s testimony was \u201cscripted\u201d and asked jurors to \u201cthink critically\u201d. <\/p>\n
Defence attorney Daniel C Reilly argued that the complainant was \u201cunreliable\u201d and reminded jurors of \u201chow high a burden\u201d proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt was. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Boston jury has found a Dublin firefighter Terence Crosbie guilty of raping a woman in a hotel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-143397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115430955770513112","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}