THE former manager of a Bolton town centre restaurant has denied raping a drunken teenager in a downstairs office after she asked him for a job.
Paul Pilkington, aged 25, denies raping and sexually assaulting the woman, who was 18 at the time, in La Tasca in Bradshawgate.
Rachel Shenton, prosecuting at Bolton Crown Court yesterday, said the rape happened in the restaurant, which has since closed, after another member of staff beckoned the alleged victim and her 16-year-old sister inside while they were sheltering from the rain in the restaurant’s doorway during a night out.
The two women were given a drink and the alleged victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, asked about getting a job at the restaurant.
She said she could access her CV through her hotmail account and Pilkington, of Mornington Road, Heaton, suggested that she went downstairs with him to print it off, the court heard.
Pilkington raped her shortly after he helped her log into her e-mail account, the jury of 10 men and two women was told.
Miss Shenton said: “He kissed her. She made it clear she didn’t welcome his advances. He lifted her up on the table. He tried to lift up her skirt.”
She added: “She said ‘No I don’t want to, I don’t want to do this. I just want a job, that’s it’.
“She kept saying ‘no babe’ — that was an expression she used for everybody — she was pushing him away with some force and he was lifting up her skirt.”
The court heard yesterday that Pilkington asked the woman to wrap her legs around him, but she refused, and he then sexually assaulted her and raped her “briefly”.
It is claimed the incident ended when the woman pushed him away and ran out of the room. She left the restaurant, which closed on September 26 last year, and went to the nearby Post Office bar to “sort herself out”.
The man who beckoned the women into the restaurant waited outside the bar and asked them what had happened.
The incident was reported to police a short time later that night when officers on patrol spoke to her in the street.
The complainant had two cuts, allegedly caused during the incident. No incriminating DNA was found on swabs taken.
On a police video interview played to the court the woman cried and covered her face with a cushion as she recalled alleged events from the evening, on December 29, 2011.
She said she had drunk four vodka Red Bull drinks and a number of shots but was “happy drunk” and not “legless”.
Pilkington, who wore a suit to court, gave “no comment” answers during a police interview but prepared a statement.
He claimed there had been “spontaneous kissing and touching” but the woman said she did not want to go any further and he said intercourse did not take place.
The trial continues.
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