Taxi ride led to rape, court told

A Pinchbeck man who denies raping a woman he met on a night out in Spalding insists it was “consensual sex.”

Matthew George Cocks (26) denies a single charge of rape after sharing a taxi home with the woman on May 29 last year.
A jury at Lincoln Crown Court heard the woman, who cannot be named, had spent the day socialising with a friend but they became separated and she took a taxi home with Cocks.
The defendant, of Orchard Close, told the jury he spent the afternoon drinking and then went in to Spalding with friends at around 8.30pm.
The jury heard Cocks was going for a taxi with a friend when he came across the woman. He said she seemed “slightly distressed.”
“I asked her if she was OK and we just started chatting from there,” Cocks said.
He had never met the woman before and assumed that she was drunk “as she was out and about in town.”
He said he had drunk seven pints of larger, telling the jury: “I knew I had a drink, but I was coherent, I knew what I was doing.”
Cocks said the woman was coherent and agreed to share a taxi with him and his friend.
Cocks asked the woman back to his house for a coffee, and to see work he had carried out on his property.
Once inside, Cocks said they sat next to each other.
“I put my arm around her, not sexual, just to comfort her, and it led to a kiss,” Cocks said.
“She returned the affection.” Cocks said the woman then took her sweatshirt off.
Asked if at any stage he got any inclination that the woman did not want it to happen, Cocks replied: “No.”
He added: “She was as happy as I was.” Asked if he ever heard the word ‘no,’ Cocks again replied: “No.”
He told the court the woman lifted her dress and removed her underwear, and both performed oral sex on each other.
Asked if he believed the woman was consenting, Cocks replied: “Yes.”
He briefly stepped outside after the woman left “all of a sudden,” but he had no idea why.
The court heard Cocks has no previous convictions or cautions and works as a refrigeration engineer.
He told the jury he was left in shock when police came to arrest him the next day.
The prosecution allege the woman “took off” and began banging on neighbours’ doors because what happened to her was far from consensual.
Under cross-examination from prosecution barrister, Robert Underwood, Cocks admitted he took the woman’s knickers home and put them in a box.
Mr Underwood said the woman had agreed to go home with Cocks so she could charge her phone to let her family know where she was. The trial continues.