A MAN has denied raping a teenage girl at a new year party.

Robert Lewis, 30, said that he asked for the police to be called after the 16-year-old accused him of raping her in a bedroom where her boyfriend was asleep.

He told a jury that he walked into the room where the couple and another teenager were in bed, and he began talking to her.

After about five minutes they began kissing, she undressed and they had sex for about 20 minutes, he told the court.

Mr Lewis, of Zetland Road, Stockton,said he had run from police when they arrived because he remembered he was carrying cannabis.

He told Teesside Crown Court: "No, I did not know her name.

"I was kissing her and she was kissing me back. She was willing to have sex with me."

He denied that he lifted the girl from the bed on the Pallister Park estate, in Middlesbrough, or that he held his hand over her mouth to silence her.

Mr Lewis pleads not guilty to raping her on New Year's Day 2001.

The case continues.