A FORMER student claimed allegations that he raped a York undergraduate had “ruined his life”.

Lewis Tappenden admitted he had cheated on his girlfriend when he had sex with the woman in her student accommodation after they met at The Drawing Board in New Street, central York.

But he denied pinning the woman down or being violent towards her when they were in her bed.

“She didn’t tell me to stop,”he claimed. “If she had, I wouldn’t have done anything.”

He claimed they had kissed in the bar and as they were walking together through the city centre, the woman had told him she wanted to have sex with him.

He claimed he had been “drunk and impulsive” and had felt guilty when having sex because he had a girlfriend.

York Press:

Tappenden said that when he was later arrested by police, he had been ‘totally shocked.’ He said: “I just broke down in tears. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t understand why that had been said.”

Tappenden, 24, a former York St John University student, now of High Street, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, denies two charges of rape.

Earlier, a flatmate of the woman alleged that as they prepared to go out with friends the evening before the alleged rape, the woman had said she wanted to “pull” a man.

The flatmate understood this to mean she wanted to bring a man home with her.

After the alleged rape the woman had told her sex had started all right but had then “got a bit weird and she wasn’t enjoying it any more.” The trial continues.