The fifth day of the trial of Hoole man Nicholas Crawshaw gets under way at Warrington Crown Court today (Monday, October 10). The 23-year-old is accused of 11 sex offences, including six rapes. Crawshaw denies all of the charges against him. Chronicle reporter Mike Fuller will be providing updates from today's proceedings.
End of day five
That is the end of the final video interview.
Judge Tina Landale has just sent the jury home as the court must finish slightly early today.
The trial will resume at 10.15am tomorrow.
Thank you for following our live updates.
Complainant says she was too drunk to consent
The interviewing officer asks the woman if she felt she was ‘too drunk to consent’
She says yes.
The complainant provided a series of Facebook messages exchanged between her and Crawshaw after the alleged incident.
She said: “I’ve looked at them and thought why was I talking to him.
“I felt like if I wasn’t going to accept it, it was what I thought it was. I wanted to feel like I was in control of the situation.
“I wanted to feel above just being a stupid girl he had sex with.
“I’ve never seen him since and I never had any intention to see him again.”
Newspaper coverage
The complainant says she told her friends either later that night or the following morning.
She said it became ‘a bit of a joke’ that she had sex in a toilet as she thinks her friends were trying to make her feel better.
She said: “The whole thing never felt right. I always felt I never agreed to it and I never had the capacity to agree to it.
“Obviously I knew it wasn’t right.
“I felt sick when I saw he had been charged.”
The woman chose to go to the police with her allegation after seeing the Chronicle’s coverage when Crawshaw was first charged.
'Shock'
The woman said she ‘felt sick’ and she was in ‘shock’ afterwards.
She recalls it felt ‘invasive’ and she was in pain. She says it has affected her future relationships.
Crawshaw left the toilet and she went to find her friends, the court hears.
She said: “I remember thinking I just wanted to go home.”
'A blur'
The complainant continued: “I remember him turning me round.
“I had my hands on the toilet.
“It was just a blur, suddenly he was having sex with me. I don’t remember it lasting very long.
“Afterwards I must’ve just keeled over on the floor. It just hit me how drunk I was and I was just sat on the floor when he told me to get up.”
Level of drunkenness
The woman said she always thought Crawshaw was ‘quite good looking’ and believes she may have kissed him on a previous night out.
They got chatting in the VIP area of Cruise.
She said: “This is the memory which is in my head, we saw someone coming out of the toilet.
“I just know I wasn’t the one that went into that toilet, I don’t remember making that decision, I can’t believe it was me who went into that toilet unless Nick pulled me in there.”
The interviewing officer asks her what she thinks she was on a drunkenness state of one-10, she replies an ‘eight or nine’.
Eighth complainant
The prosecution is now showing the jury the final video interview in the sequence of alleged victims.
The eighth complainant alleges Crawshaw raped her in the toilet of Cruise nightclub in July of 2012.
She says she had met the defendant ‘once or twice’ prior to that night.
Ex-boyfriend of complainant
The witness is a former boyfriend of the complainant. Their relationship ended earlier this year.
He says she was very upset when she first told him about her alleged rape by Crawshaw.
The witness recounts the version of events the alleged victim told him. She told him she ‘didn’t know what was happening’ while she was being attacked until it was over as she was quite drunk.
Mr Le Brocq suggests the witness cannot be sure if this is the truth as it is just what his ex girlfriend told him. The witness accepts this.
New witness
Parties are brought back into the courtroom after lunch.
Mr Mills calls the next witness, who will give evidence in relation to the sixth complainant - who alleges that Crawshaw raped her at his friend’s house on a night between July 2010 and September 2011 - in the case.
Rumours
In her statement, the witness said she ‘never wanted to come to court’ as she knows both the complainant and Crawshaw.
Mr Le Brocq says in the aftermath there were a lot of ‘rumours’ flying around in school.
The witness says she remembers the complainant being upset about it. She adds this may have been because pupils did not believe the alleged victim’s claims.
Mutual friend takes the stand
The next witness is the mutual friend whose house the complainant had stayed at on the night of the alleged incident.
The witness says before the complainant left the house they were ‘giddy’ as going to meet Nick Crawshaw was ‘exciting’.
She adds she offered her a condom to take with her. The woman says she is not sure what the complainant said because she was ‘half asleep’ and the pair ‘weren’t that close’.
Friendship with first complainant
Both the first and second complainants in the case are friends.
The woman says she did not know about what had allegedly happened to her friend until it had happened to her. If she had she would have ‘definitely’ not left the house with Crawshaw.
This concludes her video interview.
Party encounter
The complainant says she saw Crawshaw six months later at a party.
She said: “I remember getting really upset.
“He said don’t be lying about that because people had been talking.
“I think he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to bring anything up.”
The only other interaction she can remember was Crawshaw offering to buy her a drink in Rosie’s nightclub in 2015. She said she just walked off.
Told friends and family
Among the friends and family who she told about what had happened was the first complainant in the case, the court hears.
She said: “At the time I didn’t want to have the trouble of going through the police. I was younger then.”
'Panic'
Crawshaw ‘didn’t really say anything’ after being pushed off, the court hears.
She said she had told him to stop and he didn’t and that’s when she ‘started to panic’.
The complainant says she got up and ran back to her friend’s house.
She added: “I was just quite shocked and confused. I told my friend what had happened.
“I said that he was quite forceful with me.”
'I was shocked and scared'
The complainant continued: “There was just a streetlight. There was nobody walking by.
“I asked where his friend was, he didn’t reply.
“It all happened really quickly. From that point he didn’t say anything.”
She said he pushed her to the floor and had sex with her.
“It probably only lasted for 10 seconds,” she added. “I was pushing back on his arms. I managed to completely push him off me.
“Because it was really quick I was confused. It was so unexpected. I was shocked and scared.”
Exchanged numbers
Crawshaw and the complainant exchanged phone numbers before she went inside, she says.
She adds she went in, but the defendant then text her and asked her to come back outside.
She said: “At the time I would say I was just a bit confused. The fact we had never been like that.
“I thought it would be the same as before when I went back out, just kissing.
“He said he needed to meet a friend. I was quite unsure about leaving the house at that point because it was the middle of the night, but Nick said it would only be quick.
“We went down the street and turned down this alley, it was really dark.”
'Excited'
The woman said she stayed with a mutual friend of hers and Crawshaw that night.
The three had left the group together after he ‘probably offered to walk us home’.
She said: “I would say Nick was sort of holding on to me and had his arms around me when we walked back. I was probably excited about that because he was a bit older than me.”
The complainant says after they got to the house, her friend went inside and she and Crawshaw started kissing outside. It was instigated by him, the court hears.
Friendship groups knew each other
The complainant says she considered Crawshaw ‘as a friend’ and she ‘trusted’ him.
On the night of the alleged incident she had been with a group of friends in Boughton.
She says her group of friends would often socialise with Crawshaw and his mates.
Alleged alleyway attack
The court will now be shown the police video interview of the second complainant in the case.
This is out of sequence as she is not expected to be able to give evidence in the court until tomorrow.
She has alleged Crawshaw raped her in an alleyway in Boughton in 2010, when she was just a schoolgirl.
'False allegations'
Simon Mills, prosecuting, is now cross-examining the witness.
He said: “It’s been put to you in this trial that your two friends are using you to make false allegations against Nick Crawshaw.
“Is that consistent with what you know about those two young women?”
The witness says ‘no, not at all’.
This concludes his evidence.
Trust
The witness says the third complainant told him about her alleged incident with Crawshaw in 2011.
Mr Le Brocq questions why he did not warn the seventh complainant ahead of her meeting with Crawshaw in 2012.
The defence suggests this is because he did not believe the first allegation. The witness says he did not want to break his friend’s trust.
A 'link' between complainants
The witness confirms he is friends with two of the complainants in the case.
Mark Le Brocq, defending, said: “You are something of a link between them aren’t you?
“I’m going to suggest to you that they are using you as a third party to make their allegations sound more credible because you heard their stories independently.
“Do you think there’s anything in that?”
The witness says he does not believe his two friends would do that.
Parties brought into courtroom
Crawshaw is dressed smartly in the dock in a grey suit and waistcoat.
Judge Tina Landale takes her place and the jury are brought into the courtroom.
Friend of two complainants to be called
Heavy traffic on the M56 has caused a delay to the start of proceedings today, but we are expected to be under way shortly.
The jury will next hear from a friend of the third and seventh complainants, who both women told about their alleged attacks by Crawshaw in Grosvenor Park.
Day five to get under way soon
The fifth day of the retrial of Nicholas Crawshaw of Hoole is due to get under way at Warrington Crown Court this morning.
The hearing began on Tuesday with an opening address from Judge Tina Landale, a report on which can be found here.
In the afternoon, the first complainant in the case started giving evidence. The schoolgirl, who was under age at the time of the alleged offences, told the court how she was groped by Crawshaw on two separate occasions, one of them at school. You can read an account of her evidence here.
On Wednesday, another complainant claimed she was raped in Grosvenor Park. An account of her evidence can be read here.
And you can find a report here of another alleged victim’s claim she was assaulted at a sleepover.
On Thursday, the trial heard from a girl who claimed she was raped in the defendant’s bedroom.
On Friday, the court was told Crawshaw made his alleged victim ‘accept defeat’ as he raped her in Grosvenor Park.
Our reporter Mike Fuller is back in court today to provide regular updates. You can read his full account of Friday’s proceedings here.
