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Woman tells court of 'brutal rape' on platform at hands of man she tried to help

A woman has told of her terror when she was allegedly the victim of a brutal sex attack on a deserted railway platform at night.

She was on her way home in September last year when she encountered Ryan Clifford on a train.

The woman, 30, agreed she went over to him and they shook hands and chatted. He had a wine bottle in his hand.

Swanley train station
Swanley train station

“He said he was feeling unwell,” she told a jury at Maidstone Crown Court. “I got off at Swanley to change trains. He looked ill. I was concerned for him.”

They both left the carriage and went onto platforms three and four at the station. She said she wanted him to sit down.

Clifford, 28, told her to go around the side of a building on the platform.

“This is all about helping someone,” she said while giving evidence screened from Clifford in the dock.

Andrew Lewis, defending, asked: “Is it really?” She replied: “Yes. If I see somebody who is ill I will automatically go to help them.”

Clifford told her she looked like a bit of a Tomboy. She told him: “I am a bit of a Tomboy.”

Asked by Mr Lewis if she was “chatting him up”, the woman replied: “If I said I like Tomboys that would mean I like girls, so it would not be chatting up a male.”

Clifford, she said, kissed her on her mouth and it was unwelcome. It was “completely incorrect” she was happy to be kissed.

Asked why she walked away from the exit with Clifford, she said: “At that point I didn’t know he was going to rape me. I was petrified. I was scared.

“He could easily have caught me. I had a heavy bag. I could have done a lot of things with hindsight. I didn’t feel I had a choice. It was that or over the train track.”

Mr Lewis suggested she had wanted to go somewhere private with Clifford.

“No,” she said. “Even if I was attracted to males, I dol have some standards.

"A platform is not somewhere I would go to have sexual activity with anybody.”

She further denied she agreed to Clifford’s request to perform a sex act on him.

The woman said Clifford took off her tracksuit bottoms and trainers.

“He put a jacket on the floor,” she continued. “It was for him so he wouldn’t graze his knees. I didn’t lay on it.”

She claimed Clifford assaulted her further and raped her.

“You will recall in her evidence she said no from the start. How much clearer could she possibly have made herself?” - Andrew Copeland

“I feel completely ashamed and hateful about my body,” she said. “No means no. I am not attracted to men. I said no a lot of times.”

Clifford, of no fixed address, denies four charges of rape and two of assault by penetration.

He did not go into the witness box and no evidence was called on his behalf.

Prosecutor Andrew Copeland told jurors in his closing speech: “We are not going to hear from the defendant. You may think he doesn’t have a credible account that would have stood up to my cross-examination.”

He said of the woman: “You will recall in her evidence she said no from the start. How much clearer could she possibly have made herself?”

The jury has retired to consider verdicts.

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