A student who claims she was raped by a taxi driver just minutes after he picked her up from a night out in Chester tearfully told a 999 operator that she woke up naked in an unfamiliar house and ‘can’t remember anything else’.
Sultan Amari, of Chester Road in Flint, is accused of raping the young woman twice on a mattress on the floor of an otherwise empty house he owned on Sealand Road in July last year.
A jury of seven women and five men were played 46-year-old Amari’s alleged victim’s telephone call to the police on the third day of his trial at Warrington Crown Court yesterday (September 23).
"I don't know how I got there"
“I have been to a house with no furniture in it and my bag is gone and I don’t know how I got there,” the complainant – who cannot be named for legal reasons – can be heard saying.
“I went for drinks after work last night and I can’t remember anything else. I have no idea where I am.”
She added that nobody was in the house when she awoke without her clothes on, so she got dressed and left.
She walked down Sealand Road where she asked a male passer-by for help and he let her use his phone.
Woke up alone
The trial earlier heard that the woman cannot recall what happened in between leaving a bar in Chester city centre and waking up alone in Amari’s house, but had a flashback that she was lying face-down on a mattress with a man having intercourse with her.
But Amari, who had been working as a taxi driver for around 14 months at the time of the alleged attacks, insisted that both times they had sex was consensual as he took the stand to give his evidence.
He explained that he had been waiting at a taxi rank on Bridge Street at around 9pm on July 11 – a Chester Races night – but it was quiet so he decided to go home to rest for a few hours before heading back out to work later on.
Seconds after driving off, his vehicle could be seen stopping next to the complainant on CCTV shown in the courtroom.
"Take me anywhere in Cheshire"
Amari said she had flagged him down and smiled at him.
On an audio recording from one of two cameras located in his car, the complainant could be heard asking Amari: “Can you take me anywhere in Cheshire?”
Amari recalled that he was initially confused as to where to take her but she got in and he asked her if she wanted to go to his house as it wasn’t far, to which she replied yes.
He said she began to ‘exhibit sexual behaviour’ by making noises – which could be heard on the audio – and touching herself in an intimate area.
Sex on the stairs
When they got to his house, he claimed he was ‘expecting to have a talk with her and maybe order something’ but that she instigated having sex on the stairs.
“She was saying ‘I want it, I need it’,” Amari told the court.
He said they went upstairs to a bedroom where there was a mattress on the floor and they continued to have sex there, as well as cuddle, for about one hour.
When asked by his barrister Kate Hammond how the complainant was during this period, Amari replied ‘fantastic’, adding that she was ‘absolutely’ conscious and responding to him.
"I thought she must really like me"
He said he thought she needed to sleep but he did not feel tired so he went back out to work shortly after 11.20pm, but returned to ‘check she was okay’ after a couple of hours.
When he went upstairs, he said he saw her smile at him.
“I felt good because she was still there – I thought she must really like me,” he said.
He lay down next to her and claimed they ended up having consensual sex again.
Went to get food
After heading out for another couple of hours and to pick up some food at McDonald’s for the complainant, he got back to his house to find she had gone.
He said he remembered that he had just passed a girl with a man on Sealand Road so he drove down to them and realised it was her, but she ‘did not seem that friendly’ towards him.
The complainant asked him where her bag was so he returned to the property to find it and went back to give it to her.
Minutes later, the police arrived and he was arrested.
"Hadn't done anything wrong"
Amari said he was ‘surprised’ by the arrest because he ‘hadn’t done anything wrong’.
“I would not even consider touching somebody who was not responding,” he said. “I just could not do that.”
The court heard that the complainant had drunk around two bottles of wine and one cocktail after meeting a friend for after-work drinks and that a trace of methadone was detected in a urine sample taken from her at 7.55am on July 12, despite having never been prescribed the drug.
But Amari told members of the jury that he did not think she was drunk and did not see any signs which suggested she was drunk.
He denied he could smell alcohol on her breath at any point during the night and says they did not kiss because he never kisses women.
The trial continues.
