Woman ‘distraught’ after alleged rape by former Britain’s Got Talent contestant

A woman was left “upset, distraught and needing help” after she was allegedly raped by a former contestant on Britain’s Got Talent, a court has heard.

She repeatedly “told him to stop”, but it was only when she yelled and slammed Andrew Johnston in the chest after he allegedly slipped off a condom during sex that he stopped, the jury at London’s Southwark Crown Court heard.

Johnston, 30, competed as a singer on the television programme in 2008 and is now on trial charged with raping and sexually assaulting one woman and raping another woman.

The alleged offences happened a number of years after he appeared on talent show, the prosecution has said.

One of the women claimed she told Johnston “five times” to stop, the court heard.

In Facebook chat messages, she told her flatmate: “We were in the middle of having sex and he took the condom off without telling me. Obviously I could feel the difference. I told him to stop.

“He did not. I told him again. He did not. I said it another five times. He did not.”

She said she “yelled it and slammed on his chest and then he did”.

The woman added she had told Johnston that “when I say stop you have to stop.”

The woman told the flatmate she did not leave, adding: “I stayed the night like a nonce when I should have had enough respect to leave and go home but at the moment I was like, this is normal.”

After hearing her account the flatmate replied that “what he did is unacceptable”.

Within two days of the alleged attack, the woman and her flatmate had a face-to-face conversation in their home.

On Monday the flatmate recalled it as being “a very serious discussion” where she “upset, distraught and needing help”.

He told the jury: “She was very upset.

“She is somebody that is fundamentally positive and optimistic.

“I think that the severity of what had happened to her was sinking in. She was upset.”

Johnston, of Carlisle, Cumbria, denies two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.

On Monday, the other woman accepted she did not say stop or push Johnston away and told the jury: “I said slow down, (was) giving physical clues to (him), being more gentle and saying `slow down’ but it did not happen.”

She told the court it took her months to realise what happened.

Giving evidence from behind a screen, she said: “I think I was not in a place to look back and examine the entirety of events that night. I think I was trying to humanise myself and rationalise the event as a whole.”

She added: “If I make it a blip, I do not have to deal with the enormity of this process, of my belief system that non-consensual sex is something that needs to be addressed. If I rationalise it as a blip, then the next few years of my life would be easier.”

The woman had said she was having consensual sex with Johnston and asked him to use a condom.

In her police interview, she recalled moving Johnston’s hands away as he was “actively grabbing” towards her throat and she was “trying to insinuate that this is not OK”.

At some point he stopped and removed the condom, then carried on with the intercourse, she claimed.

In her police interview, the woman said: “I think I said, ‘That was not great, I’m not happy about this’, and he said, ‘It would be better for me’.

“At that stage I just remember being shaken.”

She later noticed she was bleeding on the night of the alleged incident.

Her flatmate, who had heard sounds, saw her afterwards and told her: “That was really aggressive, is everything OK?”

Johnston stayed the night and watched a show on a laptop with the woman.

She told the court she did not think she was “assertive enough” at that time to tell Johnston to leave and she did not ask her flatmate to get him to leave.

The hearing continues.