A STUDENT is accused of raping a female undergraduate after she was helped home from a house party in a drunken state.

The trial has begun of Alistair Cooke, a third year student at Durham University when the incident took place, on June 2, last year.

Durham Crown Court heard that as a volunteer with the student Nightline service he received training dealing with calls querying if having sex with a drunken female amounted to rape.

Shaun Dodds, prosecuting, said both Mr Cooke and his alleged victim attended the same student party at a friend’s house in Durham on the night of June 1.

During the evening the woman drank rum punch and gin and tonic, and appeared very drunk.

“She went home upset and couldn’t remember leaving the party.”

Mr Dodds said the party host was concerned and went after her to ensure she got home safely as she was speaking in a garbled manner and stumbling in the street, barging into things.

She was placed on the sofa at home covered by a duvet, but minutes later the defendant entered the house.

Although he told one of the woman’s housemates he was going home, he remained at the property.

Mr Dodds said the female student later recalled being in her bedroom and not knowing how she got there.

She recalled being completely naked in bed and the defendant being in the room, saying: “It’s Ali. Who am I?”

Mr Dodds said the woman told police she recalled the defendant putting on a condom and moving her round into different positions to have sex, some of which were painful.

But she said the following morning when she woke, she was “confused and surprised”, as the defendant was in the room, before, “in due course”, he left.

“She said that whatever happened in that room, it was without her consent.”

Mr Dodds said in the following days there was a flow of texts between the woman and the defendant, in which she asked him what had taken place in the bedroom.

The defendant told her he never felt that he received any signals telling him what he did “was wrong”.

Mr Dodds said the Crown’s case is that the woman had so much to drink she was incapable of consenting to sex.

The case is proceeding.