A WOMAN who claims she was raped by a doorman she met in a nightclub has told a jury that she thought her drinks had been spiked with drugs.

The 35-year-old admitted having 16 measures of alcohol during a day at the races with friends and on a return to Darlington town centre.

Giving evidence on the second day of the trial of Abderrfi Bahja, she said she had only “a vague snapshot of memory” of the end of the night.

The married mother said she felt unusual the following day – like she had consumed more than drink – and could not remember getting home.

Mr Bahja accepts that he had sex with the brunette in his car, but told police that it was consensual, and the woman had instigated it.

Prosecutor Joanne Kidd has told Teesside Crown Court that the alleged victim was so intoxicated she could not have given consent to sex.

The jury watched closed circuit television camera footage from Harveys, in Darlington, which showed the two of them together.

Miss Kidd asked members of the panel: “If you can focus, please, on how she seems to be behaving . . . you will form an opinion as to whether she is displaying signs of being intoxicated.”

She was with work colleagues inside the late bar in Houndgate for almost one-and-a-half hours – but thought it was just 20 minutes.

After reporting her fears the following morning that she may have been subjected to a sex attack, she was interviewed by specially-trained detectives.

The woman told investigators: “When I woke up, I could not remember the end of the night, or leaving the people I was out with or how I got home, or anything about it.

“I had a lot to drink, but I felt like I had something other than drink, probably drugs.”

Christine Egerton, defending, said tests on blood, urine and hair did not show any evidence of drugs in the complainant’s system.

The woman denied a suggestion from Miss Egerton that she willingly had sex with a stranger in the early hours of May 9 last year, and came to regret it.

Mr Bahja, a doorman at another venue in the town, was “stone cold sober”, and Kidd suggested he had targeted women who were alone or unattached and intoxicated.

The 45-year-old, of Shelley Road, Darlington, denies a charge of rape, and the case is expected to continue today.