A Colchester man accused of raping a woman while she was on a night out in Colchester has denied she was unconscious when they had sex.

In his second day in the witness box at Ipswich Crown Court Miridon Bera denied raping the woman at his flat and claimed  they had consensual sex.

During his evidence he claimed the woman, who had been drinking, had approached him twice on the dance floor at the Walkabout bar in Colchester and touched his groin.

He said they had chatted and kissed and when he said he was leaving she had been happy to go with him. 

He said she had had no problem walking up the stairs to his flat and once inside they had kissed before having consensual sex.

He denied that she had pushed him away at any stage.

Bera, 30, of Talavera Crescent, Colchester, has denied raping the woman in July 2019.

The court has heard that the alleged victim, who was a virgin, visited Turtle Bay and Walkabout during a night out with a friend.

Her next memory was being in a brightly lit room and pushing a man in the chest and telling him to get off her.

She said she didn’t know where she was and her next memory was hearing her friend’s voice and getting into her friend’s mother’s car.

In a statement her friend’s mother described her as being like a “sack of potatoes” and “having very little control over her body”.

In another statement the alleged victim’s mother said her daughter’s friend told her that she thought her daughter’s drink had been spiked.

The court heard that a urine sample taken from the woman 18 hours after the alleged rape didn’t detect the presence of any drugs.

However experts said the “date rape” drug GHB was rapidly eliminated from the body within one to two hours and wouldn’t have shown up.

A back calculation by experts estimated the alleged victim would have been more than twice the drink drive limit at the time of the alleged rape.

The trial continues.